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THE AMERICAN HOPE 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 



BY 



WILLIAM MORSE COLE 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1910 



'cA x 



Copyright, 1910, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published May, 1910 



©CI.A265209 



TO 

CATRIONA AND ELIZABETH 

IS DEDICATED 

THIS EXPRESSION OF THEIR FATHER'S 

PHILOSOPHY OF EVERY DAY 



PREFACE 



Stevenson, in his " Child's Garden of 
Verses/' says: 

"The world is so full of a number of things 
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." 

This is the song of childhood's observation and 
realization of the obvious good things of life. 

Browning, in " Pippa Passes," gives Pippa 
this song: 

"The year's at the spring 
And day's at the morn; 
Morning's at seven; 
The hillside's dew-pearled; 
The lark's on the wing; 
The snail's on the thorn: 
God's in his heaven — 
All's right with the world!" 

This is a song not merely of childhood's observa- 
tion and realization, but of youth's conviction — 
conviction in spite of some contradictory obser- 
vation. Some singers give up the song early in 

vii 



PREFACE 

their experience of life — when the spirit of 
youth has flown before its time. With some 
singers the spirit of youth remains long 
after the years of youth have sped, and 
the song still comes to the lips. By a few 
the song is sung even in the declining years. 
With most of us, the contradictions of life are 
too strong. We cannot see our way quite clear- 
ly through the labyrinth of experience. We 
choose a desirable thing, and then some other 
desirable thing shows itself absolutely incom- 
patible with the first. We formulate a belief, 
and then another inevitable belief refuses to 
live with it. We hold to an ideal, and then an- 
other ideal shows itself contradictory of the first, 
or experience laughs at all ideals. We form a 
policy of conduct, and then another policy, nec- 
essary for our ends, interferes with it. Bewil- 
dered by the shows of things and by the very 
real facts of experience, we wonder what life 
means and some of us begin to wonder whether 
life is after all worth while. 

I am far from convinced that life is for all 
persons worth while; but I am convinced that it 
may be made worth while for all, and that in it 
most of us may find zest. Common experience 
shows us that things are interesting just in pro- 

viii 



PREFACE 

portion as we understand them. One suspects 
that those who find life least worth while are 
those who least understand it. The reading of 
biography supports the suspicion. Clearly if 
one can see life as a whole — not only its origin 
and its purpose, but the big swing of its prog- 
ress undistorted by temporary setbacks and di- 
vagations — one can better judge whether it is 
worth while and how it can be made best worth 
while. If one could comprehend the real his- 
tory of every life since the earliest times, one 
would know life as it is; one might also fancy 
well what life will be. Our nearest approach to 
this is history, biography, and autobiography. 
Every man is contributing to mankind's knowl- 
edge of life just in proportion as he can let his 
fellows see the truth about himself, or help 
them to see the truth about themselves. If his 
place in the world has been big enough, auto- 
biography may be his best contribution to his 
fellow-man; the charm may lie in the story, but 
the value will lie in his conclusions about life 
or in the light which his story casts on the mean- 
ing of life. Even if his place in the world is 
insignificant, he may have learned, possibly out 
of that insignificance, a meaning of life, and an 
interpretation of its contradictions, that shall 

ix 



PREFACE 

help his fellows to see new worth and new pos- 
sibilities in it. To a realization of this fact this 
book owes its origin. Here are convictions 
which have grown not out of speculation, but 
out of the experience and observation of life in 
rather varied circumstances. Every conviction 
here is a mature judgment that has stood the 
test of years of critical comparison with life as 
I have found it. I have had no preconceived 
theories to defend, no propaganda to push. I 
have attempted to find in life a unity that shall 
bind all its parts together and reconcile appar- 
ent contradictions. I have sought to judge not 
only individual life but national life; and I find 
not only individual hope but national hope. 

The autobiographical note I should like to 
eliminate altogether. As the conclusions given 
here are those of experience, however, the 
nature of that experience is of importance to 
the validity of the conclusions. It is so easy 
for the critic to say of the writer " He doesn't 
know what he is talking about/' that I desire to 
indicate at least something of the opportunity 
that I have had to know facts. I have omitted 
all personal reference in the text, but to show 
the sort of experience and observation out of 
which the conclusions were drawn, I here sum- 

x 



PREFACE 

marize the facts which, bearing directly on the 
conclusions of the text, will help to acquit or 
convict of prejudice: (i) as an economic mem- 
ber of society, my experience ranges from un- 
skilled work, through the fields of skilled labor 
and clerical work, to executive position and 
professional standing (most of these, to be sure, 
of short duration, but long enough to give the 
spirit of the occupation), and I have been both 
city tenant and employing country landholder; 
(2) in residence, I have dwelt in the open coun- 
try, in four villages, and in five cities; (3) in edu- 
cational experience the range has been, as a 
student, from the common schools and high 
school, through a vocational school and college, 
to a professional school, and, as a teacher, from 
high schools in one of the liberal culture studies, 
and college in a culture subject, to a professional 
school in a very practical subject; (4) in family 
relations, my home has been under the parental 
roof, in bachelor quarters, and where I am the 
head of a household of two generations; (5) I 
have had my full share of bitter disappointments, 
of miscarried efforts, and even of calumny. 
These relations should lead to breadth of view. 
If that is lacking, I am convicted of blindness. 
The outcome of it all has been not a loss of faith 

xi 



PREFACE 

in mankind, not a shattering of ideals, not even 
passive submission to circumstance, but a con- 
viction that here in America to-day life is better 
worth living than it was ever anywhere before 
— not because life is full of delight here, but be- 
cause it is full of possibilities. This book ex- 
presses the grounds of that conviction. 

W. M. C 
Ridgewold, September, 1909. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 
I. — The Ground op Hope 
II. — The Power of Choice 
III. — The Springs of Progress 
IV. — The Marriage Tie 
V. — The Training of Powers 
VI. — The Pleasure in Things 
VII. — The Fraternal Bond 
VIII. — The Still, Small Voice . 
IX. — Living, or Getting a Living 
X. — The Will of the Community 
XL — Economic Freedom . 
XII. — The Attitude toward Life 
INDEX 



PAGE 
I 

5 
19 
48 

63 
94 
112 
124 
140 
150 

159 
182 

234 

255 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 



INTRODUCTION 

j~>[ VERY age has had its own problem, and 
\*^ every age has solved some problem 
— either wisely or so foolishly as to furnish 
the horrible example for its successors; but we 
of to-day find ourselves compassed about with a 
new problem at every turn, so that, in whatever 
direction we plan to move, some problem is de- 
manding solution before we take the first step. 
This is the characteristic feature of the twentieth 
century. This is what it means to be alive to- 
day. It is common to remark that really to 
live, to drink deeply of life, we must thrill to the 
primitive passions and give them sway. That 
is true; but to do merely that is to be behind the 
times — to live in antiquity. Merely to thrill to 
the primitive passions is not the fullness of life. 
The biggest life is to bring the primitive pas- 
sions into such relation with the complex facts 

I 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

of to-day that those passions shall not defeat 
their own purposes, as often they do, but shall 
be effective. Then, indeed, when the tide of 
primitive instincts is brought into conscious 
conflict with the various interests and hopes and 
ambitions of modern civilization, life tingles 
with a flood of emotion that was beyond even 
the fancy of the early man. We read in 
romance and history of the loves and hates and 
tendernesses of the men of old, and we thrill at 
the bigness of them; we forget the stagna- 
tion of the intervals. There were days of pas- 
sion so intense that the world and life itself were 
counted as nothing if they lay in the contrary 
scale; but there were weeks and months of life- 
lessness, or listlessness — such that the hiberna- 
tion of the bear was nearly as interesting. It is 
true to-day that the primitive passions lead men 
to fling life itself as a bauble into the scale, but 
the bargain is far more thrilling because into it 
enter a hundred other considerations- — each with 
its tissues woven through the human heart — 
which were no part of the consciousness of the 
man of old. 

It is common to say of a man that he takes life 
too seriously. The remark is a contradiction in 
terms. Never before had men the opportunity 

2 



INTRODUCTION 

to live so richly as to-day; and the man who 
does not live richly is wasting an opportunity 
that no one before him ever had. It behooves 
him to take that opportunity seriously — not 
with a long face, but reveling in the joy in it, the 
laughter in it, the absurdity and nonsense in it, 
the struggle in it, the disappointments in it, the 
agonies that are a part of its discipline, the sub- 
mergence of self in the bigness of it, the glory 
that may grow out of it. 

It is the part of a man, then, to look in the face 
the problems of the twentieth century, to see 
how they may enter into his life, and how far he 
may get into the heart of them and thrill with 
the meaning of them. This is what the normal 
American is suddenly waking to find that he may 
do. It is singular, however, that he goes about 
it with so little plan. He plunges in where wise 
men fear to tread, and is wrapped in virtuous 
content if only he can assure himself that he 
means no harm. This is well as far as it goes, 
but we may wisely seek something better. 
There must be certain fundamental philosophical 
principles, dear however unconsciously to Amer- 
ican hearts, upon which the American citizen 
who wishes to live deeply and solve problems 
wisely in this twentieth century may fall back 

3 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

in time of doubt. These he may hope to apply 
with some success in the handling of practical 
matters. The search for these is the most 
profitable work we may undertake. 

In this book is no attempt to solve specific 
problems. We seek rather an acceptable phi- 
losophy that underlies all the problems of Amer- 
ican life — one that can be expressed in com- 
mon language and may, in that useful form, help 
us in these busy days to meet life squarely. In 
the attempt to discover fundamental principles 
in modern problems, we may have to deal often 
with alternatives. It may happen, indeed, that 
several ideals are each to be held loyally, and 
yet two of them in certain circumstances may 
be in conflict. It was a characteristic of old 
times that life was so slow-moving that men 
could devote themselves in leisurely fashion to 
one thing at a time. To-day we cannot stop 
for that. Life goes rushing by, and we must 
seize it now. We must decide which of two 
conflicting ideals is more fundamental. It 
chances, however, that in deciding we often find 
that one may be brought into accord with the 
other, without giving up its own fundamental 
beauty, and in the end we find a unity in what 
at first appeared to be irreconcilable diversity. 

4 



CHAPTER I 



THE GROUND OF HOPE 



>^HE fundamental ground of American hope 
^^ is the prevailing idealism of the Ameri- 
can character. No doubt to many this state- 
ment sounds like a joke. They say that Amer- 
icans have no ideals at all. Our first task is to 
determine whether this is true. Do we Amer- 
icans as a people live to produce material things 
and to get sensuous pleasure, or do we live for 
ideals ? Do we live for things which are grasped 
chiefly by the five senses, or for ideals which 
primarily exist in our own minds — or, if one 
wishes to be more exact, in our own hearts and 
souls? It is true that American communities, 
more, probably, than any other communities in 
the world, are business communities. We seem 
to be devoted to the production of material 
things, and, from the profit that we get out of 
them, to the display of material resources and 
the enjoyment of material pleasures. The real- 
istic novelist is undoubtedly correct in repre- 

5 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

senting this sort of thing to be the conspicuous 
phase of American life, but he is correct only 
as he is a realistic novelist. The cold, hard facts 
are as he has pictured them ; but life is not made 
up of cold, hard facts. The real thing in any 
life is not what we get and what we show and 
what we do, but it is what we think and what 
we feel and what we aspire to. This does not 
mean that a man is judged by his intention 
rather than by his accomplishment, but simply 
that the real test of the man and of the man's 
life lies in what goes on inside of him and not 
in the things that we see and hear and feel about 
him. 

If a man gets out of his business the same 
sort of enjoyment that the scientist gets from 
the quest after truth, the same sort that the 
painter gets from a great achievement, the same 
sort that the musician gets from a thrilling in- 
terpretation, his life is quite as full of ideals as 
theirs. The test of idealism is whether the en- 
joyment is in the ideal or in the thing. In the 
case of every one of these men the joy comes 
in only a slight degree from the thing in it- 
self. It comes chiefly from the sense of power, 
from the sense of victory in struggle, from the 
human meaning of the thing accomplished. 

6 



THE GROUND OF HOPE 

With the business man of this type, ambition 
is directed chiefly toward a recognition in him- 
self of the human qualities which give him at- 
tainment — rather than toward tangible things 
desirable for themselves. For this ambition 
only is he willing to work so hard and so long. 
The satisfactions are in the mind and the 
heart, as ideals attained; though it chances that 
the outward objects to which they appear to be 
attached are often very gross material. It 
chances, moreover, that the thing which he at- 
tains, though desirable chiefly as a sign of in- 
ward qualities, is in the mind of the common 
man a thing in itself to be desired. Whether it 
is his fault that his critical sense sees no unfav- 
orable difference between a big awkward fac- 
tory turning out its myriads of cheap, coarse 
commodities, and the piece of sculpture or the 
musical composition, which thrills and ennobles 
thousands of human souls, is a matter for ex- 
amination later; it has nothing to do with the 
question whether the man is an idealist. The 
essential point here is that so far as he himself 
can see — and so far as we, taking for the mo- 
ment his point of view, can see — his joy in life 
is quite as thoroughly an enjoyment of ideals 
as the joy of the painter, the sculptor, the liter- 

7 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

ary man, the philanthropist. To be sure, these 
ideals often manifest themselves outwardly in 
things which an aesthetic critic calls abomina- 
tions, but it is none the less true that to the 
owner they are ideals: so the owner is an idealist. 
Never before were so many noble ideals at 
the fore in governing human activity as in 
America to-day — charity not of the purse only 
but of the heart and the hand, uprightness not 
only in private life but also in business, self-sacri- 
fice in the effort to serve the community as a 
whole, and, even among men whose aims seem 
most selfish, devotion to the immediate family. 
When the normal American whose life seems 
to be absorbed in the effort to get money is not 
influenced by the love of contest and the love 
of power as already suggested, he is usually 
actuated chiefly by a desire to make prosperous, 
and possibly envied as prosperous, those who 
are dear to him in his own family. The very 
restlessness, the very unwillingness to stop and 
enjoy life, of which Americans are commonly 
accused, are but tokens of an impelling ideal. 
If we cannot stop to enjoy what we have earned, 
it is obvious that the motive behind the earning 
is not materialistic or sensual, but is idealistic; 
and the only thing needed to make the whole sit- 

8 



THE GROUND OF HOPE 

uation wholesome is that the ideals shall be 
focused on something worth while, for now 
they are in pitiful degree dissipated in fruitless 
quests after specters of happiness or perverted 
in harmful efforts to do good. 

Two general types of idealism exist in the 
human mind, the collectivistic and the individ- 
ualistic. Often the two types meet in the same 
person ; and then a contest is likely to be in 
progress between them. The collectivistic ideal 
demands that everything shall be subordi- 
nated to the wish of society as a whole, that 
is, to the collection of individuals making up 
the whole community — whether that commu- 
nity be a neighborhood, a town, a state, a nation, 
or the world. The collectivist believes that no 
individual has a right to seek his own purposes 
in violation of the desire of the community. 
The individualistic ideal, on the other hand, de- 
mands that each individual shall seek the thing 
which seems to him best worth while, and shall 
do so unhampered by any regulations of society 
except as regulations are necessary to protect 
the rights of other individuals. The individual- 
ist believes that the community has no right to 
seek its purposes in violation of the desire of 
individuals. To express this in a more striking 

9 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

fashion, the collectivist believes that an individ- 
ual notion or action cropping out from the mass 
of general notions and actions of the commun- 
ity is rather to be repressed than encouraged; 
but the individualist believes that such an out- 
cropping is likely to be a manifestation of some- 
thing bigger than the common experience and 
therefore especially worthy of consideration — at 
least until it has been fairly tested. To the col- 
lectivist, the common will is the highest mani- 
festation of good; and that common will is 
nothing, in the last analysis, but public opinion. 
To the individualist, on the other hand, the 
most sacred thing is individuality, is that thing 
in which each man differs from his fellows; for 
that is the thing which must have come from a 
source bigger than man himself. 

It is notable that few men are absolute col- 
lectivists or individualists: most of us cherish 
some ideals of each sort; and that is why most 
of us are inconsistent in both our thinking and 
our conduct. In a sense, every man is both a 
collectivist and an individualist in his ideals, and 
so far as he is thoughtful he must be so; and 
his task in the conduct of life is to see that he is 
each in the proper circumstances. The choice 
between them is always one of emphasis. Each 

10 



THE GROUND OF HOPE 

is right in itself. In any case of practical con- 
duct, that one must be preferred which in that 
particular case will bring the greater good. In 
our American life and history both are recog- 
nized, and in the common ideal of what we 
call " Americanism " they are mingled in de- 
lightful complexity; and each man puts the em- 
phasis on one of them or the other according 
to his natural habit of mind. It is a part of 
our task to disentangle them and identify each 
in its various phases. 

The common catch words of American ideal- 
ism are liberty, brotherhood, and democracy. It 
chances that the second and the third of these 
are collectivistic, and the first individualistic. 
The first has been most talked about. The 
problem has always been, and still is, to provide 
liberty consistently with brotherhood and de- 
mocracy. The reconciliation of them all lies 
in one simple ideal which is coming to be recog- 
nized as the true American characteristic — 
however deeply it may sometimes be hidden 
or overridden — namely, a sense of responsibil- 
ity. There is no such thing as liberty for any 
man if a sense of responsibility does not check 
the exercise of liberty in other men. There is 
no such thing as an endurable democracy, or 

ii 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

government by the people, if a sense of respon- 
sibility does not control the people. There is 
no such thing as brotherhood if a sense of re- 
sponsibility does not underlie the fraternal rela- 
tions. 

It is equally true, however, that this sense of 
responsibility has its tendencies toward individu- 
alism as well as toward collectivism. " To thine 
own self be true," Polonius's advice to Laertes, 
in " Hamlet," is the commonest form of recog- 
nition of individualism. The highest good I 
know is the good my consciousness, my con- 
science, my intelligence, my heart, tell me is the 
highest good. I am a traitor to myself, to the 
only authority my Maker gave me, if I accept 
anyone's else decision about my conduct or my 
ideas. I may distrust my own judgment, and 
deliberately transfer the decision to another, or 
to what I believe to be an inspired book; but 
in that case I am still carrying out my individu- 
ality in choosing the guide. For me to take 
any guidance thrust upon me from without, on 
the other hand, is to undo myself, is to forfeit 
my individuality, is to commit spiritual suicide. 
The thing that my personality, my individuality 
(which was created in me but not by me), de- 
clares to be best worth while, for me is best 

12 



THE GROUND OF HOPE 

worth while. I cannot decide it otherwise, for 
such a decision could not emanate from me. 
To accept such a decision from any outside 
source, even though that source be the public 
opinion of a whole community, is to deny my 
Maker. A sense of responsibility to myself, 
therefore, demands as a mere matter of self- 
preservation that I obtain liberty — liberty to 
fulfill my individuality in thoughts, emotions, 
conduct. 

This demand for liberty, for individualism, 
is not merely egotism. Both the history and 
the hope of progress show it to be vital not 
only for the individual but for the community. 
As long as men are satisfied with conditions as 
they exist, taking either an average condition or 
a dead level of uniformity, no one makes any 
move to change. Every advance of the human 
race has been under the pressure of individual 
ideals more or less antagonized by the collec- 
tive sense of the community. A strict sense of 
brotherhood and of democracy, neglecting the 
responsibility to the self, would have surren- 
dered to that pressure; for if public opinion and 
the wish of one's brother are to determine con- 
duct and belief, the dreamer of strange dreams 
must keep them to himself. It is the unlike- 

13 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

ness of the individual to the mass, the outcrop- 
ping of differences, that brings about change for 
better or for worse. The highest debt we can 
owe the community is to bring out those ideals 
which make life worth while to us, and give 
other men an opportunity to pass upon them 
and see how serviceable they may be to the 
community as a whole. Any compromise by 
which we yield to antagonizing claims of 
brotherhood, or of democracy, and suppress our 
ideals, may be treachery to that which our 
Maker has given us as our possible service to 
our day and generation. Thus the individual- 
istic is interwoven with the collectivistic ideal. 

It is easy enough for the pessimist to deny 
that it is worth while to make the mass see any 
new ideals. Men, he says, are not going to 
mend their ways; they cannot mend their ways; 
and the reformer is only wasting his strength, 
his substance, and his good nature, in an effort 
to make people accept any but the ideals which 
belong to them in the mass. This is a matter 
big enough for discussion in a chapter by itself. 
Before undertaking it, however, we may wisely 
consider in some detail just what is the status 
of a sense of responsibility in American life 
to-day. 

14 



THE GROUND OF HOPE 

There is no denying the fact that, taking the 
social organism as a whole, we have in America 
in the last few years shaken ofif much of the 
sense of responsibility which was common in 
the men and women of fifty years ago. Many 
observers believe that the blame for this can 
be laid largely at the door of our educational 
system. The common educational notion of to- 
day is that education must be primarily interest- 
ing, that the pupil must learn only what he 
likes to learn, and that he had better not do 
anything at all than do it with distaste. We have 
forgotten that in all education the proper aim 
is not to get the thing done, but to cultivate the 
pozver to do. We have made it so easy for the 
child to do the thing, that he has never learned 
to give the hard or distasteful obedience. He 
has lost the sense of responsibility. The school 
has come, moreover, to undertake tasks which 
not many generations ago were accomplished 
at home. In these respects, too, the school has 
been getting the thing done and has neglected 
to train the pupil in the power to do. The re- 
sult has been a double weakening all along the 
line; the school by undertaking more things 
and undertaking to make them all easy has 
doubly reduced the number of things from 

15 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

which the pupil can learn to be responsible for 
hard or distasteful tasks well done. Making 
school more interesting has been a great 
achievement; but this remedy for an old disease 
has given rise to a very serious new disease, for 
which in practice the remedy has come to be 
further inoculation with the germ of the disease 
itself. Throughout the public school system, 
the pupil is practically never given a task and 
left to stand or fall on the accomplishment of 
that particular thing. Always he finds loop- 
holes, excuses, apologies, makeshifts, other 
chances. The thing is arranged so that he 
doesn't have to do just that thing, just right, at 
just that time. He is never held responsible 
for any definite thing, and so he doesn't know 
what responsibility is. The teacher will pull 
him through, somehow. Each laxity, moreover, 
makes him more dependent, less responsible, 
for the next task. 

This process has been particularly noxious 
because, while it has been going on, the popu- 
lation has been largely increased by immigrants 
who, however desirable they may be from the 
economic, moral, and racial standpoint, have 
had entirely different educational standpoints, or 
no educational standpoints at all. These peo- 

16 



THE GROUND OF HOPE 

pie have come to look upon the state, and 
in educational matters its representative, the 
school, as the only depositary of responsibility. 
The state is in their minds supposed to safe- 
guard the rights of all in such fashion that the 
individual has only to safeguard his own rights 
in ways in which the state seems a little defi- 
cient. It occurs to no one, therefore, to look 
out for the rights of others. 

It would be easy to enumerate hundreds of 
ways in which this lack of responsibility affects 
most of our communities. The evil is enhanced 
by the concentration of population in cities 
where the individual is easily lost sight of. The 
unfortunate results range all the way from the 
wrecking of industrial organizations, railroads, 
and banks, to the vandalism of hoodlums and 
irritation aroused by the unthinking automobil- 
ist. The lack of control springs from our char- 
acteristic American good nature, which means 
that for fear of being unpopular we allow evils 
to go on until they become intolerable. We 
are like the weak parent who allows the child 
innumerable small disobediences, until the limit 
has been reached, and then awards for one of- 
fense no worse than the rest a punishment really 
adequate for the accumulation. This is not 

17 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

government, but despotism. We are discover- 
ing our weakness and we are mending our ways. 

In view of all this, we have reason to find 
great confidence in the future of America; for 
in spite of the sapping influence of recent edu- 
cational practice, which might well have de- 
stroyed all sense of responsibility among us, we 
remain a responsible people. We do rise to 
the occasion — when we see it. Our failure is 
to see the occasion until it is an eyesore. Our 
ideals are sound at bottom; our hearts are right; 
but as we aren't yet quite sure what we are 
driving at, and as we haven't stopped to see 
how our various ideals are related to one an- 
other, we are likely not to see quite straight, or 
to think quite straight about what we see. 

We are fond of saying, and we surely have 
much ground for it, that public opinion can do 
anything in America. So long as that is true, 
and so long as a sense of responsibility is really 
the foundation of American ideals, as we have 
seen it to be, obviously the hope for our future 
is immense if we can only bring the public to 
some sort of agreement as to what we really 
wish this country to be. 



CHAPTER II 

THE POWER OF CHOICE 

1 J I *S was suggested in the first chapter, 
^/ # ■ i many pessimists deny that it is worth 
while to try to educate public opinion to any 
point of view about anything. They admit that 
public opinion is all-powerful; but they deny 
that public opinion can be created. It is the 
master, not the servant, of individuals. The 
purpose of this chapter is to examine this prop- 
osition. It happens to involve a very old phil- 
osophical problem — one which has held a prom- 
inent place in the discussions of philosophers 
and theologians for twenty-five hundred years. 
This problem is of interest just now and here 
because it may cast some light on the American 
future. There is admittedly great hope for 
America if the problem is given the common 
answer; the purpose of this chapter is not merely 
to defend the other answer, but to show an even 
greater hope in it. 

One of the very delightful essays of modern 
3 19 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

times is that of Mr. George Meredith, on 
" Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit." 
Mr. Meredith has no fault to find with taking 
life seriously, but he thinks it absurd for us, 
while we are taking it seriously, not also to have 
out of it the fun which is about us on every 
hand. Mr. Meredith would have us see that 
people are not responsible for what they do, and 
that, instead of irritation, and pessimism, and 
bitterness, we should take things that are con- 
trary to our own notions of the seemly as so 
much added to the spice of life, as so many ele- 
ments in the humor of life. To the ordinary 
man this notion that a man is not responsible 
for what he does is rank heresy, but certainly 
it is an interesting heresy worth examination. 
The fact as Mr. Meredith states it is so easily 
demonstrated, not only logically but in the ex- 
perience of every one of us, that the wonder is 
that so big a protest is raised at every sugges- 
tion that it is the truth. Let us examine it, 
not with hair-splitting quibbles over the mean- 
ings of words, but with common sense. 

The first acts of an infant are surely governed 
by either inheritance or surroundings. For our 
present purposes it is quite indifferent which of 
these two causes is at work. Nobody pretends 

20 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

to believe that the first motions of an infant 
are the result of any conscious will. He kicks 
because the exercise feels good or the chang- 
ing position relieves a cramped muscle. He 
struggles for food because the motor nerves re- 
spond to appetite. The particular forms of mo- 
tion are determined by his inherited bodily 
structure or the circumstances that make up his 
environment. These become habit. As he de- 
velops in intelligence and activity, he may 
modify these motions, but always in response 
to an impulse from within or a call from with- 
out. He does not himself bring about either 
the impulse or the call. He merely obeys. 
Each obedience, moreover, sets up new activ- 
ities; for each gives him pleasure or displeasure, 
and the emotion leads to continuance, discon- 
tinuance, or the substitution of another activity. 
Before he consciously thinks at all, he is a small 
bundle of habits not of his own choosing. The 
time soon comes, however, when the child finds 
an opposition — either from the outside or with- 
in his own consciousness — between his appe- 
tites and desires, on the one hand, and, on the 
other, the penalties or pains or inconveniences 
which he must endure if he seeks gratification. 
Whether these oppositions are given the name 

21 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

of moral struggle, or not matters nothing. All 
psychologists admit that there is a period dur- 
ing which these oppositions and struggles of 
will are unmoral, during which no notion of 
right and wrong enters into the child's con- 
sciousness. 

It is commonly believed that as the child 
grows older, however, a notion of right and 
wrong enters into his decision as to what he 
shall do. What form does this rightness or 
wrongness take in the child's mind? It may be 
purely an ideal, or it may be altogether mate- 
rialistic. The opposition may be between an 
appetite, for instance, on one hand, and an ideal 
of loyalty to a parent; between an appetite and 
loyalty to a sense of honor; between an appetite 
and loyalty to dignity; or it may be between an 
appetite and another appetite; or between loyal- 
ty to one ideal and loyalty to another ideal. 
It is common to say that the choice between an 
appetite and loyalty is moral, and between an 
appetite and another appetite is unmoral; and 
the distinction is for ordinary purposes suffi- 
ciently good; but, for the purpose in hand, it is 
necessary to understand that there is fundamen- 
tally no distinction in the mind of the child. 
The real question which the child settles in his 

22 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

own mind is this: which of the two things at 
hand is, at the present moment, with the knowl- 
edge that he now has, with the power of fore- 
casting the future which is his, with due regard 
to the circumstances about him, the better thing? 
If at this particular time, in these particular 
surroundings, he thinks better of the satisfac- 
tion of that appetite than he does of the alterna- 
tive, it is absolutely inevitable that he shall 
choose the satisfaction of that appetite. It 
may very well be true that five minutes later 
his point of view will have shifted, his loyalty 
may have come to the front, his forecast of the 
future may be more accurate, his imagination to 
see the wholeness of the thing may have revived. 
If he has what is commonly called a moral sense 
at all, he then is wiser for the wrong choice and 
endures the pangs of remorse. Yet it is true 
that if he were back where he was five minutes 
ago, he would still choose the thing that he chose 
five minutes ago. The whole question is one of 
emphasis. Things do not look to him now as 
they did before, and it is just because things 
look different that he has chosen differently. 
He cannot turn from the thing which at any 
moment looks to him best worth while. The 
thing which seems to him best worth while may 

23 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

so far have taken possession of his mind that all 
other things bear perverted relation to it. He 
may not see straight; but he must choose as he 
sees. It would be treachery to his own soul 
if he did otherwise. 

It is a commonplace to say that our deliberate 
choices of yesterday are the unconscious habits 
of to-day. Looking back into the past, we can 
see that the choices which we as children made 
in the dawn of moral consciousness have affected 
our point of view and our judgment about many 
things happening years later; for the point of 
view of each of us has been influenced very 
largely by the experiences that have grown out 
of the earlier points of view. Most of us are 
at one time or another seized with certain no- 
tions, developing out of our point of view or 
coming into it from the outside world, that loom 
to us very big. These notions take possession 
of us, and make all other things look small or 
mean in comparison. They are our dominant 
ideas. 

If in an early choice between two things or 
two courses of action our imaginations were 
dominated by certain aspects of that choice and 
the result of the choice pleased us, it confirmed 
that domination. If the result of the choice 

24 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

merely failed to displease us, it at least left the 
domination undisturbed. A sort of permanent 
unconscious and possibly perverted point of 
view was established; and it is inconceivable 
that we should make a choice different from the 
earlier choice until right relations have been es- 
tablished in our minds between that early domi- 
nation and the facts of life. Repentance and 
remorse are experiences so common that most 
of us have come to believe that we in some error 
of moral choice in the past deliberately chose 
that thing which we knew to be worse. When 
we come to think of it, however, we see that we 
did not make a choice which we at the time 
knew to be wrong. We may have recognized 
the evil in the thing chosen, but we believed 
that that particular evil was offset by some very 
particular good — that the thing which, under 
ordinary circumstances, would appear to us to 
be wrong was, under the peculiar circumstances 
of that time and place, well worth while. 
Choice is determined by the point of view at 
the moment of choice. We may have known 
that the thing chosen would under normal con- 
ditions violate the moral dictates of all human 
experience, violate our own notions of right and 
wrong, but we at least believed that such ex- 

25 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

perience was necessary for our own development 
as human souls acquainted with good and evil 
— or, to put it in another way, we believed, be- 
cause of the momentary domination of a false 
notion, that the thing which we chose was for 
that particular occasion the best thing. Pos- 
sibly the mere experience of rebellion just then 
seemed the most desirable thing in the world. 
Our common moral standards were thrown 
overboard under the domination of moral stand- 
ards which for that particular moment loomed 
for us bigger than all the experiences of the 
past. 

Each one of these choices, moreover, has 
tended either to confirm or to break down some 
experience of other times. We may indeed 
have gone on year after year with occasional 
lapses into what for us in normal conditions are 
staggering sins, and as we look back we may suf- 
fer distinct anguish of remorse; and yet on the 
approach of new temptation we may fall under 
the spell of the old domination. When the 
domination is on us we believe that we have 
seen a new light; we believe that we have grown 
stronger and can laugh at temptation; and we 
go down again into sin, not because we have 
chosen wrong rather than right, but simply be- 

26 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

cause our imagination misleads us, or our mem- 
ory fails us, or our judgment is twisted. It is 
inconceivable that with two things before him 
a man should choose that which to his mind is 
at that moment the less desirable. He may 
know with his intellect that a bird in the hand 
is worth two in the bush; but if just now and 
here his desire is for the sight of two birds rather 
than for the touch of one, he cannot choose the 
one. He may know with his intellect that wine 
is a mocker; but he remembers that it is a 
mocker only " the morning after," and he is 
thinking of " now " ; now looms bigger than to- 
morrow; let wine mock — to-morrow. He knows 
with his intellect that sufficient unto the day is 
the evil thereof; but the troubles ahead are his 
troubles, they are a part of his life, his person- 
ality, sacred to him; he will make the most of 
them; and so he cherishes them, broods over 
them, until they grow to absurd magnitude, and 
his life is a burden to him and to all his friends. 
We do not always choose wisely, for we do not 
at all times see straight, think logically, feel 
truly; but we must choose what looms biggest 
at the moment of choice. 

It is common for virtuous people to declare 
that their basis of choice is morality. They 

27 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

say that they have chosen this or that not be- 
cause it was desirable, but, in spite of its being 
undesirable, because it was right. They do not 
realize that they contradict themselves. Their 
remark implies that right may be undesirable. 
What they mean is simply that they are looking 
beyond the desires of self here and now, to the 
welfare of the future self, or of the community. 
With such vision they find desirable a thing 
that if they were taking the standpoint of the 
selfish present moment would look undesirable 
— or they see as ultimately undesirable a thing 
that in the narrow selfish judgment of the mo- 
ment would look desirable. The choice of the 
moral man is different from that of the unmoral 
man or the immoral man just in the degree that 
his vision is wider and truer. He sees the big 
truths and the eternal truths, and these swal- 
low up the petty truths of the moment which 
dominate the other man. It is true that the 
moral man chooses a thing because it is moral; 
but he has previously decided that it is moral 
only because, using the best judgment at his 
command, he believes that it best fulfills his 
proper relation to his own future, to the com- 
munity, and to God — that is, that it is desirable. 
We find, then, that even he who says that he is 

28 






THE POWER OF CHOICE 

governed in his choices only by moral principles 
is really impelled to choose as he does only be- 
cause his heredity and his environment make 
him see things in certain aspects — as desirable 
or undesirable. 

The necessary outcome of all this is a clear 
recognition of the fact that men and women 
are not responsible for their conduct. What 
we do to-day is determined largely by what we 
thought and felt about human affairs yesterday; 
and what we thought and felt yesterday was de- 
termined by what we thought and felt the day 
before; and so on back to our earliest experi- 
ences. Much of what we have thought and felt 
has been due to our education, conscious or un- 
conscious. Much of it, at least many biologists 
will so tell us, has been due to inheritance; but 
even in fields where inheritance has left us free, 
it is a fact that when our power to know the 
truth has given us wise choices, these choices 
have helped to make future choices wise; and 
when we have been able to choose only foolish- 
ly, these foolish choices have reduced the prob- 
ability of future wisdom. Each of us is the 
product of a past which at the moment he had 
no power to change. 

The reason that this doctrine has found so 
29 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

slight acceptance is simply that most people are 
afraid to admit that the sinner is not shameful. 
In spite of the Gospel, forgiveness is not popu- 
lar. We dislike even to throw the mantle of 
forgiveness quite over our own sins. We cher- 
ish the fiction that we have been naughty. To 
many, moreover, this doctrine that choice is not 
free seems to throw the doors open wide to all 
kinds of harm and vice. Such people neglect to 
look at the other side. If a man must choose 
foolishly when he sees or thinks or feels mis- 
takenly, he must by the same law choose wisely 
when he sees and thinks and feels truly. To 
tell him that he is not to blame for choosing 
foolishly does not make him foolish, and it does 
not take away from him the desire for the best. 
It only makes him see, when in his normal state, 
the necessity for fortifying himself against the 
obsessions that make a fool of him. He can 
no more choose the wrong when he sees the 
truth, even though he knows he is not respon- 
sible, than he can choose the right when his 
previous experience leaves him unable to recog- 
nize it. It is no more my praise when I have 
done right than it is my blame when I have 
done wrong. My unworthiness of praise and 
my freedom from blame cannot affect my con- 

30 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

duct. To know that I am not blamable for 
my sins does not increase my capacity or even 
my willingness to do wrong. In the cases 
where I have resisted temptation, I have done 
so because, for me, at the particular moment 
when the temptation appeared, loyalty to some 
virtue has seemed of far more importance than 
any personal satisfaction in yielding. The fact 
that this is no credit to me and that no discredit 
belongs to me for the sins that I committed 
does not make sin seem to me any more desir- 
able than it did before I knew that I was neither 
praiseworthy nor blameworthy. 

There is one circumstance, however, in which 
it may be true that a general acceptance of this 
doctrine of irresponsibility would remove one of 
the influences for right conduct. So far as men 
now do right only because they are afraid to do 
wrong — afraid of divine wrath, — the community 
would suffer if men believed themselves free 
from blame. Yet to banish the doctrine on this 
ground would be like defending a superstition 
because it might chance to keep men from evil. 
This would be to doubt the value of truth. The 
fear of divine wrath is really effective over 
only a comparatively small number of mankind. 
Many are skeptical about such wrath, many hope 

3i 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

to escape it by repentance, and many, striving 
after virtue for virtue's own sake — as the only 
positive worth-while, — could not strive more ef- 
fectually whatever fear of punishment might pur- 
sue them. We shall see, as we proceed, that the 
community can provide for the protection of vir- 
tue, and can do it far better than by fostering 
any false notion of the nature of the human will. 
Out of this theory of moral irresponsibility 
comes, as a matter of singular fact, a very con- 
siderable sense of responsibility. If it is not 
within our power to choose otherwise than as 
the vision and the thought and the emotions of 
the moment dictate, it is our big task to see 
that the vision and the thought and the emo- 
tions shall be at their best. It is not always 
in a man's power to see straight and to think 
correctly and to feel truly; but when he is at his 
best he can do all three reasonably well. When 
he is at his best he wishes to be wise always. 
That is the time to prepare for wisdom. That 
is his opportunity. The knowledge that it is 
his opportunity is his hope of salvation. The 
old answer to the question whether man is free 
to choose good or evil was that he could always 
mil to do right, could at least always will to 
make the effort to learn what was right. That 

32 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

is just what we here deny. A man cannot will 
to do anything until his soul has inspired him 
with a wish for that thing, and the wish is built 
up out of his inheritance and the experience of 
the past. All* conduct must occur at some defi- 
nite moment of time. A man necessarily wishes 
the thing best worth while for him, but the 
momentary satisfactions of sense may at each 
moment of opportunity seem to him better 
worth while than the result of any effort to learn 
of any other worth-while. He may prefer the 
other worth-while in the abstract, but the pref- 
erence may not be strong enough, at any par- 
ticular moment of opportunity, to make that 
other worth-while seem quite worth the effort 
to acquire it. So he may stagnate unless he 
can be made not only to see the vision, but to hold 
to it long enough to make it his domination ; then 
he is saved. 

Here is the first responsibility growing out 
of the doctrine of irresponsibility — the respon- 
sibility to self. Every man has his inspired mo- 
ments when he is better than himself. He must 
take his turn while the tide serves. He may 
snatch strength and virtue in those moments 
when the soul is drinking in the highest that 
the world has to give. He may make these 

33 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

highest things more and more his dominant no- 
tions. He is not fated to sin. The golden mo- 
ments he may coin into the treasure of his soul. 
He is to-day affecting his future not only by 
creating its possibilities, but by setting up certain 
irrevocable barriers. He is tending to-day to 
make dominant in his future certain points of 
view, certain antipathies, and certain passions. 
The opportunities of to-day will never recur in 
just the same form, and to-morrow may be too 
late to nourish a seedling or to kill a weed. To-day 
may destroy the one or root the other. As a con- 
sequence of to-day's neglect of an opportunity to 
direct the current in the right direction, he may 
spend years in vain regret and pitiful helpless- 
ness. Only a realization of to-morrow's com- 
parative helplessness can make him see the value 
of to-day's opportunity. Out of to-morrow's 
helplessness grows to-day's sense of responsi- 
bility. 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. " 

Suppose he is not aware that his hope lies 
only in an opportunity to snatch the truth dur- 

34 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

ing the moments when he is better than himself. 
Suppose he is indifferent to his real hope and is 
uninspired — a mere groundling. What then is 
his hope? He cannot by the will raise himself, 
for he has no will to do so, and he has no wish 
that can father the will, and he has no knowl- 
edge that can father the wish. Here is the sec- 
ond responsibility springing from the doctrine 
of irresponsibility. If I know that it is within 
my power to make a certain person see better 
ideals, see more truthfully the facts of life than 
he can now do — so that he will choose rightly 
instead of wrongly, — and if I realize how impor- 
tant it is that he should do so, it is my business 
to give him the opportunity. Indeed, if I can 
see the thing this way, not only may it be my 
business to help him, but it may be absolutely 
essential for my happiness to do so. If I believe 
that that service rendered to him is more im- 
portant to my fulfillment of my destiny than the 
thing which I should do otherwise, I must from 
the nature of the will itself make every effort 
to enlighten him. That is to me the thing best 
worth while. I do not choose it; I am by my 
very nature forced to it. Any failure on my 
part to take up that responsibility must be due 
to the fact that I cannot see his need in its right 
4 35 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

relation to my own, and, therefore, to me the 
thing that I am striving after in my different 
course is better worth while than the effort to 
enlighten him. I may, indeed, believe that by 
omitting to serve him I shall retain means and 
time and strength to serve a greater number of 
persons in a wider field of enlightenment; and, 
if that is the case, it is absolutely impossible for 
me to will to give my attention immediately to 
him. If, on the other hand, I can see his need 
as more important than any other, I am com- 
pelled to serve him; and so far as his need and 
my need are a need of the community, I have 
become, out of my individuality working through 
his individuality, a servant of the community. 

It is obvious, however, since according to 
the doctrine here indicated we are not respon- 
sible for our sins, that we are not responsible 
directly for our failure to help others by giving 
them what enlightenment we can. If I do not 
help my brother, my failure is due to my inabil- 
ity to see the value of helping him. If I saw 
it, I could not avoid helping him. This seems 
to wipe all moral responsibility out of human 
nature. If I am not responsible for my own 
adoption of wrong, am not responsible for fail- 
ing to see the value of my own better self, and 

36 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

am not responsible for failure to enlighten 
others out of the inspiration that I gather, even 
though that might set them right, it would 
seem as if there is no hope for anyone. The 
hope lies in the fact that enlightenment does 
come to us sometimes from extraordinary 
things, not as a direct result of our wills, but 
as a result of the progress of human nature and 
human society through the evolution of the 
ages. If the mere writing of this chapter makes 
me see, in proper relation to other things, my 
duty to enlighten others, I am thereby forced 
to make efforts for their enlightenment. If I 
induce others to think these things, and if they 
see the true responsibility of this doctrine of ir- 
responsibility, a force for good is at work in 
widening circles. A man must seek the big- 
gest good when he recognizes it. Anything 
else is suicide. No man can stir up in himself 
the wish for right, or the will to seek the right; 
but inspirations to be at our best are all about 
us of innumerable sorts, appearing in innumer- 
able ways, at unexpected times — in the manifes- 
tation of that " enduring power, not ourselves, 
which makes for righteousness." Everyone rec- 
ognizes this whether he believes in immortality 
and a personal God or not. History presents the 

37 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

fact that there is such a power. It is manifested 
in the gradually improving right sense of man- 
kind, and, regardless of the many cynics, the 
majority of mankind not only believe in it but 
are trying to be coworkers with it. The world 
is wiser, and better, and happier, and less selfish, 
than ever before in its history; and the constant 
discoveries of corruption and selfishness and ma- 
terialism arise not from a degraded condition of 
the majority, but simply as exceptions which 
stand out notably only because the general 
level of righteousness has improved so much that 
the things which previously seemed to be nor- 
mal are now conspicuous for their rarity. The 
opportunities for seeing the truth, for culti- 
vating the power of thinking straight, and for 
warming the heart, are growing in number every 
day. 

Some people profess to believe this doctrine 
of the will blasphemous. They cannot with 
complacency believe that God ever allows 
wrongdoing as a matter of natural law. They 
wish to believe that all sin comes into the world 
against God's will. Such a notion, it should be 

observed, implies that God is not supreme, 

some antagonist, some evil one, has estranged 
man's will from God. If it were true, God 

38 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

would be no god at all. Some other god would 
need to be above him as the Supreme. The ra- 
tional notion is that the Supreme is not a god 
of whims, of chance, of happenings out of a 
clear sky, but a god whose ways are unchang- 
ing. If he is a god of law, the human will, which 
is the most important of created things, must 
be subject to laws. Indeed, when we come to 
think of it, the contrary notion is either nonsense 
or absurdity. If a man's will is not determined 
by the law of his being, one of two other things 
must explain it — imposition from without, or 
chance. If the choice is imposed from without, 
there is no such thing as a man's will at all; for 
in the first place, if imposed from without, it is 
not his; and, in the second, so far as he is con- 
cerned, it is not his will. Whatever such a thing 
is, it is outside our discussion here. We are 
not concerned with such things as a fall on the 
ice, or a shake of the head in palsy; we are con- 
cerned with intentional acts, for these alone 
manifest will. To explain intention by outside 
compulsion is to talk sheer nonsense, is to con- 
tradict oneself. To say, on the other hand, that 
chance determines will is to commit an absurd- 
ity. If chance governs my intentions, I am 
likely, after a lifetime of reasonable morality, to 

39 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

plan a burglary, to murder my neighbor in his 
bed, to carry off a case of diamonds — that is, I 
am quite as likely to do this as is the profes- 
sional burglar. No wonder Launcelot Gobbo 
remarked: " It is a wise father that knows his 
own child ! " If this theory of chance is true, it 
is indeed a wise man that knows his own deeds ! 
Is it chance that some men are always sober 
and some always drunk; that some are always 
honest and some always thieves; that some are 
always kind and others always brutal? The 
dice must be loaded! There is no alternative; 
we have seen that imposition from without is 
nonsense, for then the intention is not intention; 
we have seen that chance intention is absurd, 
for it makes me intend what I abhor; the only 
possible origin of intention remaining is that of 
the natural law already expounded. This is the 
only theory that is consistent with the notion 
that God is rational. If man could not con- 
ceivably do wrong, there would be no virtue, no 
happiness, no value in doing right. Man would 
be an automaton. Wrong must be possible in 
order to give life an object — the acquisition of 
character, which is the power to withstand evil 
and accomplish positive good. Yet if God im- 
posed intention on man from above, or made 

40 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

him subject to chance intention, man would 
still be an automaton, as we have seen. The 
only possible situation consistent with an ideal 
of good, then, is man's freedom to work out his 
own progress by natural law— that is, as we 
have seen, directed in the first instance by his 
inheritance and his environment, but enabled 
through his golden moments to overcome his 
primary limitations, and to make exalted no- 
tions dominant and creative of new life, new 
power, new will. 

It is interesting to note one curious inconsist- 
ency in the doctrine of those who believe that man 
is responsible for what he does and that he is 
blameworthy or praiseworthy accordingly. They 
are well aware of the fact that often a trivial in- 
cident determines a course of action fraught with 
great results ; and yet they determine the rank of 
every man by the issue. An extreme case of this 
is common in the thought of those who hold to 
the old New England theology. Suppose two sin- 
ners attend revival services on the same evening, 
one to scoff and the other to pray. The intending 
scoffer is touched by the anecdotes of the evangel- 
ist or convinced by his logic, and is converted. 
The other is unmoved and unconvinced. We are 
told that if both should die before morning, the 

41 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

one who had attended the meeting with the will 
to scoff would be saved; but the other, with the 
will to believe, would be condemned. In one case 
the preacher chanced to say things which met the 
point of view of the sinner, and in the other case 
he failed to do so. It is surely contrary to all 
American notions of the worth of manhood to dis- 
tinguish between these men on any such chance 
as that. It is common to talk of rescuing a man 
from sin. Surely if he is " rescued " from with- 
out, he is as guilty as if he had committed the 
sin. The escape lies in his good fortune, not in 
his worth. Everyone would be rescued from all 
sin if the right helper were always in the nick of 
time with the maximum influence, Rationally we 
cannot give the meed of praise for virtue to one 
who has been rescued in time, and so we may 
not give the word of blame to one who has gone 
down in blindness and stupidity and hardness of 
heart. George Meredith is right. Men and 
women in this world are not to be blamed for sin 
and praised for virtue : they are to be merely pit- 
ied or admired. Sympathy must be in any case 
theirs. We may laugh with them when their stu- 
pidity ends in comedy, and we may stand in awe 
when it brings tragedy. When, on the other 
hand, we see wisdom, we draw inspiration; and 

42 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

then out of that enlightenment we see new ways 
open to ourselves. 

Is this doctrine, that we are not responsible 
for our conduct, consistent with American ideals ? 
Some common American beliefs are apparently 
contradictions of it, but these will be found on 
analysis either untrue or really allied to it. It is 
common, for instance, to say that in America a 
man's will is all-powerful, that a man is what he 
makes himself, that a man is recognized not for 
what circumstances may happen to have labeled 
him, but for what he is in himself. These state- 
ments are more nearly true in America than else- 
where in the world, and yet they are far from 
true here. Each assumes that a man is at some 
stage of existence a formless mass of raw mate- 
rial which he, as a sort of god outside that mass, 
proceeds to mold into the shape that his will dic- 
tates. They neglect the fact that the will is in the 
mass, is governed by the mass, and can work pri- 
marily only through the mass. Even if we grant 
that the will through God can attain the most ex- 
alted things, we still have to make allowance for 
the fact that in some cases the will to seek God's 
aid was never aroused, and that in others the aid 
sought was never for exalted ends. No one pre- 
tends to believe for a moment that all men are 

43 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

actually equal in power, or in charm, or in inter- 
est, or in influence. We are compelled to recog- 
nize differences, and we realize that these differ- 
ences in men spring largely from differences in 
opportunity; but the essence of the American 
idea is that, though we recognize differences in 
men, we shall not look upon one man as more or 
less respectable or reprehensible than another ex- 
cept as in his relation to the community he may 
prove himself so. We wish to know not who he 
is, but what he is good for. We do not care 
whether his power of service in the community is 
derived from inherited talent, from patient self- 
cultivation, or from simple good nature. Though 
the man who has risen by self-cultivation is given 
most admiration, we do not usually grant him 
greater outward consideration. Such extra con- 
sideration as we give him is less a personal trib- 
ute than a recognition of the possible value to the 
community of the powers which he has proved 
himself to have; that is, it is still his value as a 
man, as a possible factor in civilization, that calls 
for our esteem : we are not paying abstract trib- 
ute, we are simply valuing men at what they are 
good for. This is as it should be. Every man 
is what he has been made by inheritance, by per- 
sonal surroundings, by chance influence, and by 

44 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

the big influence of the progress of the race. 
Since he could not have been otherwise, he is what 
he is by exactly the same law as that by which we 
are what we are. He is simply our brother. 

So far we have been concerned only with the 
past. What of the future ? Since a man is what 
he is because he has always chosen thus and so 
out of the experience of the past — or his past 
has literally chosen for him — it is true that his 
future will be controlled, willy-nilly, by its own 
past. For the same reasons that he has been un- 
able to escape the evil that his inheritance and 
his surroundings have thrust upon him, he will be 
unable to avoid the good that wise friends enable 
him to see. He seeks that which looks best worth 
while at the moment of choice, and nothing else 
appeals to him. Make him see and feel the best, 
and he cannot avoid it. It is air and food and 
drink to him. If the enlightened see his need, 
they have no alternative but to try to enlighten 
him : they cannot help it. If they are successful 
in enlightening him, if they give him a greater 
power of vision, a clearer head, a warmer heart, 
he has no alternative: he must take the better 
thing: the eye and the head and the heart seize 
it for him, and he has no power or wish even to 
protest. These friends cannot make him over; 

45 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

they cannot make a new man of him : but they can 
influence his conduct, and that may be what the 
community wants; then his conduct, by giving 
him new experiences, may make a new man of 
him. 

Out of this grows our encouragement to strive 
for the progress of the race. The truth makes 
men free. It is the essence of truth to prevail. If 
w T e cannot make prevail our notions of truth, we 
are either mistaken in our notions, or we are in- 
competent apostles. The assurance that men have 
no power to avoid the truth when they once see 
it gives each man courage to go on preaching 
his individual notion of truth. He knows that if 
it is false it cannot prevail, and that if it is true 
he may some day learn to present it so forcibly 
to his fellows that they have no alternative but to 
follow it. Here is the individual bringing his gift 
to the community; and no greater gift can the 
community receive than the biggest thing any in- 
dividual soul has been able to find in this human 
experience. The finest thing in life is for each 
man to find that which is for him the biggest 
thing and then show his treasure to his fellows. 
Anything less than this is treachery first to him- 
self and then to mankind. 

This, then, is the nature of our hope. Men are 

4 6 



THE POWER OF CHOICE 

so made that they follow the best they see — that 
thing which at each moment of choice looms best 
to them. When they see the truth, see it so clearly 
that it dominates their vision, they cannot follow 
error. Our task is to find the truth and make it 
dominant not only for ourselves but for others. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

1 HE discussion of the preceding chapter has 
been intended to show that the possi- 
bility of a change in conditions of whatever sort 
lies not at all originally in the individual will. 
Our willing is all done for us by the soul which 
our experience has developed out of our inherit- 
ance. We may all have a very strong influence 
over the involuntary choice of others, for our 
relation to them is among the experiences which 
determine their choices. Each choice of each soul 
is determined by the vision, true or untrue, per- 
verted or straight, all-embracing or constricted, 
which the individual may have at the moment of 
choice. We are now concerned to see how it hap- 
pens under these conditions that man does actu- 
ally progress. 

Four theories are offered as to the normal 
method by which society advances. Three of 
these lay stress on heredity, and the other on the 
influence of surroundings. Those who attribute 

4 8 



THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

power to heredity are divided into two opposing 
schools : those who believe that a parent may- 
transmit only characteristics which the parent 
himself inherited, and those who believe that he 
may transmit characteristics which he has acquired 
during life. The extremists of those who believe 
in the transmission of acquired characteristics go 
so far as to say that a child may inherit from its 
father and mother, chiefly from the mother, prac- 
tically any mental or moral trait that they with 
sufficient determination wish it to inherit — or, 
to be more specific, that the will of the parents 
directed toward desired traits for a year preced- 
ing the birth of the child practically creates those 
traits in the child's nature. This effect is pro- 
duced chiefly by the mother, though the father's 
influence is active during a short period. Under 
this theory, a woman whose life has been selfish, 
sensual, narrow, may by a supreme effort of will 
make her child generous, spiritual, and broad- 
minded. At the other extreme of the four the- 
ories of progress is that which denies that par- 
entage has any influence over the child. It is 
worth while to examine each of these theories in 
some detail. Before doing so, however, it is well 
to note one fact. In none of these theories is any 
offense for the believer in divine interposition in 

49 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

the affairs of men. All ways are open to God. 
He can work as well through parental influence, 
and natural selection, and the influence of sur- 
roundings, as he can through miracles and vis- 
ions. He can as easily interpose in the affairs of 
men through these agencies as through any, 
These theories of progress do not attempt to ex- 
plain away the hand of God, but only to show 
some of the methods by which the supreme work 
is done. 

We may well examine first the theory of pre- 
natal influence — the theory which declares that 
the child's character is largely determined during 
the months immediately before birth. This as- 
sumes that the influence of parents overpowers 
that of earlier ancestors. It assumes, too, that the 
parent transmits to the child his state as it is at 
the time of making the child. It assigns to par- 
enthood a function bigger than merely the crea- 
tion of a new body composed out of the bodies 
of the parents — with certain characteristics at- 
tached. Parentage, in this theory, is not merely 
a formative act, putting into shape material al- 
ready existing: it is a creative act, bringing into 
the world not only a body but a soul that may 
be bigger than the springs from which it came. 
If in the months before conception the mother 

50 



THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

and the father are striving after purity, and kind- 
ness, and breadth of vision, if during pregnancy 
the mother is devoted to the cultivation of these 
things, her effort is impressed upon plastic ma- 
terial in the unborn child; and in that child, be- 
fore the direct experience of life can harden that 
material into creases and folds and ruts of error 
and misapprehension, the ideal, which in the 
mother may have had to struggle against years of 
unwisdom and bitter experience, may become the 
germ of a beautiful domination. So she has cre- 
ated in her child a thing which she was not able 
to mold even in herself. What she strives to be, 
but because of hardness of heart may not be, her 
child becomes. Let her once see the vision of 
truth, feel the inspiration of the creative power, 
become dominated with the passion for realizing 
her better self, and in the child will be realized 
what the mother's inheritance and experience of 
the past. have made impossible for her. 

This belief is the most reasonably hopeful that 
the mind of man has discovered. If we of this 
generation can go far in making our children 
what we please, even though that is no farther 
than making them strive after righteousness, the 
hope for the future is abounding; for their strife 
after righteousness will assure the righteousness 
5 5i 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

of their children. Couple this theory with the 
principle of choice explained in the last chapter, 
and a new day is within our vision. If it is true 
that a man who really sees the good is thereby 
forced to help others to see it, if it is true that 
a man who really sees the good must strive after 
it, if it is true that a man really striving after the 
good can beget children who will attain it, the 
progress of man is dependent solely on a recog- 
nition, by the enlightened, of the exact task be- 
fore them. The hope of the situation lies in the 
fact that each year finds the task reduced. The 
enlightenment not only scatters the darkness but 
kindles new lamps. Is this all too good to be 
true? Is it the vagary of a dreamer? Before 
attempting a decision, let us turn to the other 
theories. 

Many deny the power of the mother peculiarly 
to influence her child during pregnancy, and yet 
believe that characteristics which the parent has 
acquired may be transmitted. They deny, for 
instance, that a parent who inherited a deceitful 
nature may transmit frankness by a struggle for 
frankness during pregnancy ; but they admit that 
if such a parent in his earlier life has acquired 
frankness, in spite of his inheritance, that frank- 
ness will descend to the child. Similarly with evil 

52 



THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

characteristics; they may be acquired and trans- 
mitted, but only after they have become second 
nature. The essence of this theory, therefore, is 
a belief that the good and the evil which each 
generation makes second nature for itself is made 
a part of the inheritance of the race, and may go 
on accumulating interminably. 

The third theory denies that any characteristics 
are transmitted unless they have been inherited. 
The ground for this theory is the belief that the 
germ of life is continuous from generation to 
generation, and that it is not modified by anything 
happening to the individual — unless it lacks nu- 
trition. The physiology of the matter is the be- 
lief that each child at birth has within its sexual 
organs the germs that shall serve its parental 
function for life, and that the character of these 
is therefore already determined. Hence, in this 
theory, nothing that one may do or acquire will 
affect the inheritance that one gives one's children. 
At first thought, this theory seems to imply that 
no change is possible between parent and child or 
from generation to generation. That w 7 ould be 
true if parentage were single; but since in all 
higher animals two parents are involved in every 
new life and no new life can inherit all the char- 
acteristics of each parent, the characteristics final- 

53 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

ly inherited are combinations of the two sets of 
characteristics — some from the father, some from 
the mother. A hope of progress lies in the happy 
combinations of characteristics. Finally, we have 
what in nature is called a " sport." No type of 
living thing has been known always to breed true. 
The " odd stick " occurs now and then. We call 
it an " odd stick " only because we cannot trace 
the cause of its variation from the type of its 
parents. The fact is simply that sometimes off- 
spring inherit characteristics unlike either parent 
or any known ancestor, and that these variations 
are continued, or may be continued, in their de- 
scendants. Under this theory of heredity, there- 
fore, progress lies in two forces — the opportunity 
for children to be superior to their parents be- 
cause of a more fortunate combination of charac- 
teristics in the two parents than in either alone, 
and in the tendency of nature to advance occa- 
sionally, in a sport, by a leap. These forces, it is 
true, may result in a backward process, but by the 
evolutionary theory of the survival of the fittest 
such unfortunate offspring cannot long survive 
and perpetuate themselves in a world where 
higher types are the standard. So in the end 
these laws are forces directed for progress. Their 
influence, moreover, is greater than may at first 

54 



THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

appear. The combination of characteristics in 
parents may yield children superior to either par- 
ent not only because the child may inherit only 
the best of each parent, but because the charac- 
teristics may so fortunately combine as to create 
something new. An analogy is found in the 
chemical world. Two atoms of hydrogen, an ir- 
ritant gas, combined with one atom of oxygen, 
another irritant gas, form a molecule of water, 
a soothing fluid. No amount of mere mixing of 
hydrogen and oxygen will make anything but hy- 
drogen and oxygen ; but the moment a true union 
of those elements occurs, a new thing, with new 
characteristics, is created. So it may be with 
heredity. Nature protects fortunate unions, but 
she strives to exterminate the issue of those that 
are unfortunate. 

It is worth while here to see how great is the 
antagonism between the theory which declares 
that parents may make their children what they 
like and that which declares that they can trans- 
mit only what they inherited. If it is true, 
as one theory declares, that no change can be 
made in the parental germ after birth, the parents 
cannot by their life affect what they transmit to 
their child. The only evidence which the advo- 
cates of this theory can give is that no change 

55 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

in the physical nature of parents, by mutilation 
or otherwise, can be shown to have passed, even 
in remote effect, to offspring. For instance, am- 
putation of the tail of mice for many generations 
has produced no effect on offspring. Tails per- 
sist. In other words, the acquired characteristic 
is not transmitted. Many instances of this sort 
are good evidence. Such evidence is purely neg- 
ative, however, and a few doubtful cases tend to 
support the contrary doctrine. The real flaw in 
the reasoning is in the fact that we are not sure 
that what applies to bodily characteristics is true 
also of mental and moral. It may be true that 
a requisite for perfect physical manhood, such 
as two eyes for the children of one-eyed parents, 
is supplied by nature, and yet not be true that 
mental and moral traits lost by parents are inher- 
ited by children. The world of mind is still very 
imperfectly understood, and its relation to the 
world of matter is even less understood. We can- 
not say surely that the law of one is the law of 
the other. An idealist, who believes that all mat- 
ter is but the manifestation of ideas, is only 
amused at the thought that a supposed germ in 
a child at birth preordains the character of that 
child's child. The materialist, on the other hand, 
believing that mind is only a mode of motion for 

56 



THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

matter, sees no escape. Even the materialist, 
however, believing, as he does, that the germ 
must be properly nourished and that inadequate 
nourishment may affect the child's inheritance, 
may admit that the life of the parent, affecting 
the nutrition of the germ, may affect the character 
of the child. Those who deny the transmission of 
acquired characteristics do not usually admit that 
mental and moral characteristics enter into the 
nourishment of the germ; but since such charac- 
teristics are admitted by them to be in the germ 
at conception and at birth, it would seem natural 
to admit that, as the physical character may be 
changed by the quality of nourishment, mental 
and moral influences may have some effect. 

Finally, we have to consider the belief that char- 
acter is produced only after birth and only by 
environment — by the external circumstances of 
physical being, education, association. Accord- 
ing to this theory, two children of whatever par- 
entage, taken at birth and given the same food, 
clothing, shelter, education, recreation, associa- 
tions, will grow up similar in character; and this 
will be true in all cases where the environment is 
actually and not merely apparently the same. 
This is a favorite theory of social workers who 
are striving primarily for model tenements, model 

57 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

feeding, model schools, model entertainments. 
There is much evidence not only that children of 
model homes have grown up better citizens than 
children of the street, but that model surround- 
ings have reformed incorrigible children. Un- 
fortunately, all such evidence is matched by chil- 
dren of model homes who have gone to the bad, 
and by children of extreme poverty, ill-nourished, 
ill-taught, ill-governed, who have become model 
citizens. There is inspiration for right living in 
wholesomeness and cleanliness and kindness, but 
it is by many doubted whether that inspiration is 
really effective unless it chances on good ground. 
In the child dominated by the passion of pride, no 
kindness quells temper and stimulates affection as 
it does in the child naturally loving. Such pas- 
sions are manifested even before the child is 
conscious that he has individuality. They are 
inborn. With one child the kindness never gets 
the chance of influence that it gets with the other. 
In one case it meets its like : in the other it must 
fight its way. To expect the two children to 
reach the same goal is to deny them individuality. 
If only environment affects character, parentage 
is a wholly impersonal function which may as well 
be performed by proxy. 

We have, then, four theories of progress. Let 

58 



THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

us review them in the order in which they recog- 
nize parentage as a factor. The theory of pre- 
natal influence declares that a man and a woman 
by diligent strife to attain certain ideals in them- 
selves, particularly in the year before their child 
is born, may start that child's career with a de- 
cided bent, a decided predisposition, almost a 
domination, toward those ideals. The others who 
believe in the transmission of acquired character- 
istics, even though they deny the special influence 
of the prenatal period, declare that every vir- 
tue, every power, every vice, every weakness, de- 
veloped in the parent, tends to perpetuation in the 
child ; and so virtue or vice is accumulating, mul- 
tiplying itself geometrically in the exact ratio by 
which we acquire it. Those who deny the trans- 
mission of acquired characteristics declare that 
progress lies only in the fortunate mating (and it 
is not possible always to foresee) of parental char- 
acteristics, and in the occasional happy " sports " 
of nature. Finally, those who deny every influ- 
ence but environment declare that all children are 
born with equal possibilities; if man gives them 
the best opportunities, they will be equally blessed 
and equally a blessing. 

No one of these theories is susceptible of abso- 
lute proof — proof to satisfy all reasonable minds. 

59 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

Each of them has its sincere believers, and each 
has scoffers. The reasonable attitude is one of 
hope. All four theories mean progress for the 
race. The first, if true, means rapid progress so 
far as people may be brought to comprehend it 
and guide their lives by it. The second means 
steady progress with the growth of personal vir- 
tue and strength. The third means progress by 
the slow immutable laws of nature assisted by the 
obedience of man. The last means progress 
chiefly as man can merge his individuality in the 
mass and take a view to great extent communal. 
It chances that these four theories contradict 
each other only negatively. Each attributes prog- 
ress to one source; but its skepticism regarding 
other sources is not essential to its own positive 
elements. Positively, the theories may all be 
true. Indeed, that would be the height of pro- 
gressive fortune. It is unquestionably true that 
environment does affect character. We all know 
that hunger and indigestion and cold are not 
good for the temper; that luxury does not tend 
to purify the flesh; that evil communications cor- 
rupt good manners; that familiarity with sin 
dulls the sensibilities and the conscience. Let 
us make the most of it, and do what w T e can to 
improve the environment of our children and of 

60 



THE SPRINGS OF PROGRESS 

our neighbor's children — and in these days the 
neighborhood knows no bounds. It is also true 
in the minds of all but a small class that a for- 
tunate mating in parentage is a factor in the 
character of children. That surely the commu- 
nity cannot afford to neglect. We have good 
ground to believe that character deliberately 
built up in the past, not merely the issue of a 
fortunate chance mating, is transmitted, in in- 
creasing vigor in each generation, to the future. 
Finally, we have some ground, more than a mere 
hope and faith that it is so because it ought to 
be so, for believing that the struggle of men and 
women after righteousness may actually issue in 
their children in more transmitted ingrain right- 
eousness than they themselves ever gained. This 
hope and faith make life a bigger and a holier 
thing than anything else conceivable can do. It 
gives a sort of immortality on earth — our indi- 
vidualities projecting themselves down the ages 
in an ever-growing realization of righteousness. 
It is noteworthy that the theory of the will 
given in the last chapter is consistent with the 
positive elements of all these theories. We were 
concerned in that chapter with learning just why 
a man is what he is : we found it to be because 
from inheritance and experience he at one time 

61 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

or another reached certain conclusions about what 
is best worth while, and that those conclusions led 
to other experiences which in turn led to new con- 
clusions, and so on interminably. So man is a 
creature of the force of circumstances. All these 
theories help to explain what are the circum- 
stances determining the man. As we have seen, 
in their positive elements they may all be true. 
It seems to be the part of reason, in outlining a 
plan of progress, to assume that they are so. 

One thing binds all these theories together. 
All are effective through parentage, or at least 
through the home. Whatever our conclusion may 
be as to the real source of progress, therefore, we 
must apply it first in the domestic relation. To 
that we will proceed. Then we may examine en- 
vironment as it effects men and women outside of 
the home. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 



IT is difficult to state offhand what is the 
American ideal with regard to marriage. It 
is certainly true that America has always main- 
tained that the only dignified motive in marriage 
is love. Not merely in the comic papers but 
throughout American life we find it common to 
laugh, or to sneer, or to speak with bitter de- 
nunciation, of the custom of marriage for con- 
venience or marriage for money ; and the fact that 
the comment is sometimes a laugh and sometimes 
a sneer and sometimes a denunciation indicates 
sufficiently that the point of view is not at all a 
pose, but is as a whole sincere. There have been 
plenty of marriages of convenience and for money 
among Americans, but the fact that public opin- 
ion has met them with so little favor is an indica- 
tion that they are exceptions. The only point in 
this connection about which there can be any dif- 
ference of opinion as to American ideals is what 
Americans mean by love. It is a dangerous thing 

63 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

for anyone to attempt any definition of love. We 
can talk about it more easily than we can define 
it; and of course in a discussion of this sort the 
matter in hand is not love in the abstract, like 
that love which St. Paul spoke of as the greatest 
thing in the world, but love as ideally existing in 
the marriage relation. The love of a girl for her 
father and of a boy for his mother are conspicu- 
ous among the beautiful things, but they are not 
quite the same sort of thing as the love of hus- 
band and wife. Quite as different are the love 
of brother and sister, and of two brothers, and 
of two sisters. The matter of age has little to 
do with it. In all the various forms of affection 
certain elements are common. Delight in the 
presence of the other, desire to serve the other to 
the extent of self-sacrifice, faith in the other — 
these and many other elements are common to all 
forms of personal affection. The beauty of love 
between man and woman lies in part in all these 
elements. In an attempt, therefore, to define or 
merely to discuss the ideal relation of marriage, 
we assume between husband and wife the ele- 
ments common to all affection, as found in the 
various other relations already mentioned, but 
we expect to find also something distinctive. 

It has not been uncommon to say that the fea- 

6 4 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

ture which distinguishes love between man and 
woman from the commoner sorts of affection is 
that it consists of an absolute union of interests — 
physical, mental, moral, and spiritual. That is 
true as far as it goes, but it does not sufficiently 
take into account the fact that this sort of union 
persists occasionally between mother and daugh- 
ter, between mother and son, between father and 
daughter, and in the various other relations al- 
ready mentioned. It is notable, however, that in 
these unions no idea of marriage can be enter- 
tained — either between the parties to the union or 
between one party to the union and an outsider; 
for if either person in such a union entertains the 
thought of marriage possibility, the seed of dis- 
union is not only present but perceived. Such a 
union is complete, then, only when it goes with 
an incompleteness of life — an abandonment of one 
of the functions of life. The ideal love is surely 
more than this. It is a complete union for a com- 
plete life. Let us find its distinctive feature. 

It is the fashion in these days to analyze things 
largely from the standpoint of evolution. We 
may go back as far as we like in history, or go 
down in our own time as far as we like in the 
scale of biology, and we shall find that sex is sim- 
ply nature's provision for getting desirable off- 

65 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

spring. Parthenogenesis — unmated parenthood — 
may in several generations produce either too 
much variation from a desirable type, because un- 
balanced by a corrective influence, or too much 
monotony. The only reason for sex in the human 
relation is that offspring may partake of the na- 
ture of two parents and the transmitted charac- 
teristics may be fortunate. It is obvious, there- 
fore, that the one natural motive of married love, 
as distinguished from the other types of love, is 
the propagation of the race. 

This notion of common parenthood, on the 
other hand, covers a far wider field than at first 
appears. Though it is based on a physical fact, it 
enters all the phases of the common life. Clearly 
under the first notion of heredity given in the last 
chapter — that is, the power of prenatal influence 
■ — this notion of common parenthood may, at least 
to the mother, be the whole of life, for she knows 
that every act, every word, every emotion, may in- 
fluence the whole life of her child. The prospect 
of common parenthood under any conditions must 
affect the moral life of the parents, even though 
they believe only in the influence of environment. 
Again, the whole mental attitude of the parents 
toward life in general may be largely influenced 
by their anticipation and realization of common 

66 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

parenthood. Finally, the whole spiritual activity 
of their natures, since parenthood is perhaps the 
most beautiful thing on earth, must be largely 
governed by this common thought. It must 
remain true, therefore, that the idea of common 
parenthood is the underlying idea of the mar- 
riage relation, and although there is no such thing 
as parenthood without the physical relation, the 
physical occupies absolutely the smallest part in 
the relation as a whole. Indeed, the physical re- 
lation has absolutely no reason to be, no excuse 
for being, no apology for being, except in the 
notion of common parenthood. Our analysis, 
then, gives us warrant for hazarding a definition 
of love between man and woman. In the first 
place, it is a domination — a thought that fills the 
mind and brooks no denial — and is always a 
beautiful domination, though sometimes it is not 
quite justified. It adds to the other elements of 
affection a passion to join the loved one in per- 
petuating in the world that loved one's body and 
soul. It is the lover's unconscious answer to 
Death : She shall not die ; she shall live eter- 
nally on earth. 

It is obvious that this definition of love will not 
be accepted by all professed lovers. We have no 
right to construct a vocabulary of our own and 

6 67 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

say that those who do not love in this fashion 
do not love at all. It may well be believed, how- 
ever, that in the world's literature poets and nov- 
elists who have written of love have had in mind 
this sort of thing more often than any other. 
That which distinguishes perfect love between 
man and woman from all other affection is some- 
thing more than reproductive desire ; it is the de- 
sire less for self-reproduction than for the repro- 
duction of the loved one. In the lower animals, 
sexual desire is satisfied apparently w T ith indiffer- 
ence to the mate, and usually, at least on the part 
of the male, without regard to the advent of off- 
spring. This is why human sexual activity with- 
out regard to the mate and to offspring is mere 
bestiality. The higher the animal, the more dis- 
crimination is shown in mating. In the human 
relation, the more the attention is focused on the 
mate, rather than on the mating, the higher is the 
type. In the highest type of human relation, sex- 
ual desire will go unsatisfied for life rather than 
suffer what it believes would be with the wrong 
mate mere degradation. This sort of desire alone 
seems to be worthy of the name of love. It is at 
least the ideal toward which the evolution of the 
race is working. Anything less than this may in 
the language of convention be called by the name 

68 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

of love, but it is really only animal instinct hu- 
manized by affection — such affection as may exist 
outside of the marriage relation. The perfect 
love, which is one of the factors in our American 
hope, not only centers affection on the loved one, 
but concentrates the reproductive instinct until 
desire is concerned less with self than with 
the perpetuation of the ideals which that loved 
one personifies. In a word, the essence of 
love is passion for the perpetuation of an 
ideal. 

Where such love exists, the lover is usually 
persuaded that he or she, appreciating the loved 
one better than anyone else, is best fitted to join 
in perpetuating that ideal; but when one is con- 
vinced that one is less fitted than another lover, 
the perfect love is superior to jealousy, and, with- 
drawing its suit, accepts its tragedy. Such exalt- 
ed love is of course rare, but it has been known 
again and again. 

It would be easy, if one were so inclined, to 
ascribe many of the evils of our civilization to 
errors in the conduct of the sexual relation. The 
amount of loathsome disease due to sexual de- 
pravity, and visited upon innocent and unwitting 
wives and children, is admitted by all authorities 
to be appalling. We are not concerned here with 

6 9 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

disease, however. As we have already seen, most 
of the theories of progress ascribe to parenthood 
the chief influence over the future. If parenthood 
is degraded — not merely in its attitude toward 
children, but in its exaggeration of the physical 
element — the children are likely to be gross, sen- 
sual, impulsive, selfish. A bitter example of that 
is a common condition of the negro in the South 
to-day. During slavery times, and even later, 
many negro women were mistresses, voluntary or 
involuntary, of unprincipled whites. Such con- 
cubinage was an accepted fact. Several genera- 
tions of half-breeds begotten in mere lust were 
born in the South. They and their descendants 
have bred in lust. The unspeakable sufferings of 
white women from the brute passion of these 
creatures is warning of the awfulness of sexual 
instinct divorced from love. This is an extreme 
instance, not often repeated under such clearly 
defined circumstances and with such fearful re- 
sult ; but a milder type of the same sort of thing 
is commonly before us in the sensual and licen- 
tious issue of many marriages. The origin of sex 
is, as we have seen, nature's need in producing 
certain types. That is satisfied in bi-sexual par- 
enthood. Parenthood seems to be designated by 
nature as the sole function of sex. Any other use 

70 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

of the sexual relation appears to be perversion — 
prostitution. To look at parenthood as an acci- 
dent or an incident of marriage is to reverse the 
order of nature. To look at the arrival of chil- 
dren as the price to pay for sexual pleasure — a 
penalty avoidable with good luck — is to confess 
marriage a pretense. To welcome the child but 
deplore its unseasonable arrival is to confess it an 
accident — to confess that nature refused to be 
tricked. The fact is that nature recognizes no 
sexual relation but that of common parenthood, 
and she pursues with unrelenting vigor those who 
try to trick her. The penalty is either the defeat 
of their purposes or the steady degradation of 
their souls. The perfect parental relation is that 
which can say to the child, " To that which 
seemed to me best worth perpetuating, I joined 
the best that was in me, in order that out of that 
union you might spring. You were desired ; you 
are welcome." When a parent cannot say as 
much as this to a child, he has failed to experience 
the full meaning of parenthood. Nature is hav- 
ing her turn, and shame and deceit and want of 
confidence are in the house. No wonder the chil- 
dren are sensual, selfish, lacking in reverence ; no 
wonder such parents are unwilling to talk of sex- 
ual things to their children ; and no wonder such 

71 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

children go to anyone but the parents for answers 
to questions of inevitable human interest. 

It is easy to say, as some have said, that the 
ideal marriage relation suggested here is not quite 
human. The answer is simply the statement that 
it is life altogether most human. We have al- 
ready noted the fact that the primitive passions 
fill only a small part of life's capacity. A meager 
soul may be filled with the brute passion of mere 
sex ; but the big soul is athirst for something that 
calls into play not only primitive passions, with 
all their force, but the eternal conflict between 
them and the far-sought vision — not mere active 
passion, but passion held tense with restraint, 
physical vigor hand in hand with spiritual aspi- 
ration, satisfaction forgetting itself in self-sac- 
rifice, years of preparation yielding an eternity of 
issue. This is the meaning of nature's parent- 
hood — years of restrained exalted passion, the 
outpouring of vigor and a flood of spiritual sat- 
isfaction, and the rest of a lifetime in self-sacri- 
fice for the fruitage of eternal souls. If the pas- 
sion is not continuous and its exercise controlled, 
if the satisfaction is not a sort of sacred culmina- 
tion of a period of preparation, if the physical 
energy is not etherealized with spiritual exalta- 
tion, one of the big things of life has been missed 

7^ 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

— one's birthright has been sold for a mess of 
pottage from the flesh pots of Egypt. 

This, then, is the marriage tie — the bond of two 
souls, complements one of the other, in a union 
that creates new souls out of- the best of the old. 
Whatever tends to bring into activity any but the 
best tends in the same degree to weaken the tie. 
It is in the marriage relation, more than anywhere 
else, that one loses when one is not at one's best. 
The relation exists to perpetuate that best — its 
kindness, its tenderness, its self-sacrifice, its self- 
restraint, its vigor, its purity, its honor. There, 
more than elsewhere, must one be conscious of 
what one is doing, for in parenthood the seeds of 
eternity are sowed. If a man must now and then 
throw restraint to the winds, must have his re- 
bellious fling against control, must be a primitive 
creature, we may pity him for the stupidity or 
weakness that leave him less than man; but let 
him not think the field of sex, much less the field 
of marriage, is for such wanton sport. 

What relation does this ideal married love bear 
to the theories of progress ? In the theory of pre- 
natal influence, this love is the chief spring of 
progress. Since by this theory children inherit 
their parents' states peculiarly at the time of con- 
ception and pregnancy, the ideal state of love is 

73 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

likely to mean an ideal inheritance — at least in 
kindness, tenderness, self-sacrifice, self-control, 
thoughtfulness, purity. It may mean in addition 
to these all that the parents strive for. Nothing 
less than the ideal love can give such inheritance, 
for unless each parent believes the loved one bet- 
ter fitted than any other to join in parenthood, the 
union of soul is not perfect and the creative act 
lacks the spiritual satisfaction. Lacking that, it 
cannot give the child his full spiritual birthright. 

By the second theory of progress, which ad- 
mits the transmission of acquired characteristics 
but denies the special power of prenatal influence, 
ideal love, as a factor in the development of the 
individual parents, is necessarily of great impor- 
tance, for it tends to round out the individual by 
making complete his incompleteness ; and this im- 
provement is transmitted to posterity. If the love 
is perfect, the virtues that it engenders and 
strengthens become ingrain in the parents and 
are the inheritance of the child. He begins at 
the point which they attained. Any violation of 
the ideal, on the other hand, as it weakens the 
spiritual tie and so robs the fullness of the indi- 
vidual life of the parent, cheats the child of a part 
of his inheritance. 

If we adopt the third theory of progress, which 

74 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

denies in parents any power to transmit charac- 
teristics which were not themselves inherited, we 
find the element of sentiment in ideal love less 
important, but the practical fact of perfect mat- 
ing quite as essential. We can illustrate this by 
a comparison with the other theories. In the 
others, the important factor is not so much the 
fitness of the parent as the lover's belief in that 
fitness; the sentiment in large part creates the 
spiritual element in the child. Under this third 
theory, however, since the child inherits certain 
hereditary characteristics of his parents and has 
no part in any characteristics that they may have 
acquired by conduct or association, the governing 
factor in his inheritance is not at all what the 
parents think about each other, or what is their 
relation to each other, or even what the parents 
actually are to-day, but only what they inherited 
at birth. This apparently reduces the situation to 
a cold matter of fact; but in reality the human 
heart has a way of warming even to things that 
are not apparent on the surface. Under our defi- 
nition, love is passion for the perpetuation of an 
ideal. It is quite as easy for a man to dote upon 
an inherited characteristic as upon one that is 
acquired. He may indeed suspect that the inher- 
itance is more likely to endure, even though it be 

75 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

less prominent than acquired traits. The inher- 
itance sometimes represents, in a sense, what 
might have been, and what may yet appear. It is 
seldom true, of course, that men and women love 
for what the loved one might have been. They 
love for what appears to be. So far as they de- 
sire to perpetuate what appears, rather than what 
might have been, and so far as the theory in ques- 
tion is true, progress does not lie so nearly in the 
palm of men's hands as we well might wish; for 
the theory tells us that inherited characteristics 
do not always appear until the second generation 
— that is to say, while we love what appears, we 
may be begetting only what might have been. 
We are compelled to hope that this is not true. 
Even here, however, the ideal married relation, as 
depicted previously, is more likely to bring the 
progress of the race than any other. Though it 
may be true that one's conduct does not affect off- 
spring, and that selfishness and self-indulgence 
and lust are not transmitted unless they were also 
inherited, one cannot know one's fitness to beget 
children unless one has proved oneself over and 
over. By this very theory, character is more like- 
ly to be inherited than acquired; and the most 
satisfactory test of inherited character is present 
character. How can anyone expect to be loved if 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

the best criterion of his inherited character — 
which we have just seen to be his present char- 
acter — declares him unfit? The perfect married 
love, even if we accept this theory of progress, de- 
mands that the best self be constantly at the fore, 
or the lover may have reason to doubt that the in- 
herited self is fit for perpetuation. Then love 
dies. 

Finally, we have the theory that proper en- 
vironment is the only spring of progress. What 
has this to do with married love? This theory 
denies any individuality in parenthood, for it de- 
nies any but physical difference in children at 
birth. Its emphasis is necessarily on the home, 
the center and spring of influence. The ideal 
love, as we have seen it, makes home an epitome 
of the best life — passionate, restrained ; eager, pa- 
tient; vigorous, refined; ambitious, self-sacrific- 
ing ; tender, firm ; individualistic, collectivistic. 
Here things must be in the open, for frankness 
the child must learn. The parent must be able 
to look the child in the eye fearlessly, or the child 
will carry his secrets elsewhere. There must be 
no hidden self-indulgence to build a barrier be- 
tween the generations. The child is the best self 
of the parents set in their midst as a witness and 
as a pupil. If they can bear with a clear glance 

77 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

the scrutiny of those best selves, the home is a 
spring of progress. If not, progress is hampered 
— or possibly thrust back upon itself. Even by 
this theory, then, ideal love, as we have defined 
it, is the best assurance of progress. 

This ideal love is not too good to be true. It 
is found where theories of progress are unknown, 
and where they are pondered. It is a living fact. 
It is more common in America than anywhere 
else in the world. It is the ideal American mar- 
riage. If the first theory is true, it creates new 
spirit out of the mere craving of the soul; if the 
second theory is true, it stores the future with the 
growing fruit of to-day's struggle after right- 
eousness ; if the third theory is true, it passes on 
the heritage of the ages with increase, provided 
only we combine wisely the elements of that her- 
itage ; if the fourth theory is true, it gives every 
day a direct value in deepening the path which 
shall be fondly followed by the foot sorely tempt- 
ed to wander. As already remarked, these the- 
ories do not exclude each other. In their positive 
elements they may all be true. We may well 
live as if they were all true. Even if any of 
them be false, life is actually better worth living 
when lived as if they were true. Life is worth 
living in this fashion for its own sake, irre- 

78 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

spective of progress. That ideal love is its own 
happiness. 

We have spoken of the thought of common 
parenthood as the distinguishing feature of love 
between man and woman, as the marriage tie. 
We are naturally concerned, therefore, with a pos- 
sible severing of the tie. If in the mind of one 
of the pair the other is not fitted to transmit its 
character into the future, that other is no longer 
desired as a coparent; and if the spiritual side 
of parenthood is to be given its proper weight, 
the physical relation becomes absolutely repulsive. 
In other words, in such a case the marriage has 
already ceased to exist; the one function which 
ever can have justified it, which ever can have led 
to it, operates no more. The principal question 
is always in such cases whether the marriage 
should keep its legal status after it has lost its 
spiritual significance. The history of marriage 
indicates that its function as a legal institution 
has been to provide for the maintenance of the 
children and their mother. It has been necessary 
to provide not only that the children shall be 
properly nurtured, at least so far as the law can 
force such nurture upon the father, but also that 
the mother shall not be abandoned after she has 
satisfied her husband's desire for parenthood. 

79 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

She has trusted her future to the father, and he 
must care for her. Beyond such outward phys- 
ical care, however, the legal institution of mar- 
riage has never gone. When, therefore, the de- 
sire for common parenthood or the satisfaction 
in it has ceased, the only concern of marriage as 
a legal institution appears to be provision for the 
care of children already conceived and for the pro- 
tection of the mother against abandonment. This, 
therefore, should be the concern of the divorce 
laws. In other respects, if marriage has ceased 
spiritually, it is absolutely a matter of indifference 
whether it exists legally. From the nature of the 
case, if the primary function of the marriage in 
its origin has ceased, the husband can as a hus- 
band do for the wife nothing which he could not 
equally well do for her as a friend or a relative. 
Consequently, with the cessation of the internal 
marriage relation, it is consistent and altogether 
harmless that the extraordinary marriage relation 
as recognized in legal responsibility should end 
also with the provision for financial support. 

The real responsibility of the husband is more 
than financial, however. It is to help the wife to 
make the most of herself. It can be satisfied as a 
father might satisfy it. It is certainly no greater 
than a father's, for as the father is responsible 

80 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

— because he begot her — for her early life, so 
the man who married her is responsible for 
what he assumed of her later life. Divorce can 
relieve him only of the responsibilities peculiar to 
a husband, and it can do that. only because the 
internal marriage relation is ended. This must 
be true even when the wife is the one who desires 
divorce. If the husband has failed as a husband, 
he is still responsible for the care that he assumed 
in a father's place — unless the wife waives that 
care. Morally, no divorce can do more than sever 
the tie that distinguishes marriage from the other 
forms of human relationship ; the other ties must 
remain as binding as ever. No longer husband 
and wife, the man and the woman are peculiarly 
responsible to help each other because their lives 
have been so closely interwoven. Under abso- 
lutely no conditions can this responsibility be 
denied. 

This theory of divorce has always met vigorous 
opposition on the ground that it degrades the 
marriage relation. The natural answer is to ask 
whether degradation consists in severing le- 
gally a relation which has already been severed 
mentally, morally, and spiritually, or whether it 
consists in trying to continue physically and le- 
gally a relation which long ago ceased to exist in 

81 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

other respects. Surely, the conception of mar- 
riage as already set forth in the first part of this 
chapter is the highest possible; for it gives to 
that relation all that is beautiful in any kind of 
love, and it adds to the other elements of love 
something which comes as near being godlike as 
anything can — that is, cooperation with God in a 
creative act which is primarily spiritual. With 
this conception of marriage in mind, the horrible 
thing is not that when love has ceased divorce 
should follow, but that when love has ceased the 
pretense of marriage should continue. 

If, after the spiritual relation between husband 
and wife has ceased, another woman's beauty of 
mind and of spirit seem to the husband preemi- 
nently to demand perpetuation, it is the worst 
possible condition to have him still bound to serve 
the first in a relation which must be abhorrent to 
both, whereas he might be free to serve the sec- 
ond in a relation which is godlike. It is clearly 
true, also, that, when the relation has ceased, the 
woman should be free with our characteristic 
American liberty to perpetuate as far as she may 
the body, the mind, and the spirit of another man, 
if any seem to her preeminently to demand her 
aid for perpetuation. It is a wrong to the indi- 
vidual and to the community that the dead thing 

82 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

should be allowed to decay in the house rather 
than that it should be buried and a new life spring 
up in its place. This assumes, as a prime condi- 
tion, however, that all remaining of the old re- 
sponsibility is fully performed — all that a father 
should do for his children, all that a man may do 
for a woman who is no longer his wife. When 
these things are not done, remarriage is out of the 
question. 

This argument may seem on superficial read- 
ing to support free love. If the words are prop- 
erly used, it does ; but the argument is based upon 
a sort of love which is practically never associated 
with the common expression " free love." Cer- 
tainly it does not attempt to defend lust, or sen- 
suality, or any impulse that throws off responsi- 
bility. The freedom advocated here demands 
only the right to protect a holy thing against 
sham, and, while all that can possibly remain of 
old responsibilities is still fulfilled, to assume new 
responsibilities. Such new responsibilities can be 
defended only when they spring from a passion 
for the perpetuation of an ideal. 

It is common to read in the magazines and 
newspapers that the number of divorces is in- 
creasing rapidly. This is not necessarily a bad 
sign. Already we have observed in several 
7 83 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

connections the fact that what appears to be a de- 
moralization in the community is only an indi- 
cation that the general standard is higher — so 
much higher that the moral delinquents stand out 
conspicuously. It is true that divorces are in- 
creasing rapidly. If this is a sign that the mar- 
riage relation is coming into higher esteem, as is 
perfectly conceivable, it is most wholesome. If 
in the old days the marriage relation was contin- 
ued physically when the spiritual element had de- 
parted, we should hail with delight the common 
severance of union. If, on the other hand, the 
growth of divorce is due to the fact that people 
are looking more lightly upon all phases of the 
marriage relation, the condition is appalling. 
This supposition is to be doubted. It is neces- 
sary to consider the fact that the causes of un- 
happiness in marriage are increasing with the 
complexity of our civilization. With the growth 
in the variety of interests — social, intellectual, aes- 
thetic, moral — in every considerable community 
in the land, it is inevitable that differences shall 
arise in the conception of how life ought to be 
lived. Fifty years ago even in our most complex 
communities the number of occupations for live- 
lihood, for amusement, and for culture, was ex- 
tremely limited. The common affairs of every- 

8 4 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

day life filled the hours of men and women with 
the same sort of interests; even the moral prob- 
lems of those days were not particularly complex. 
The right and the wrong- of things were fairly 
evident. Nowadays, with a hundred opposing 
interests, the man with the most upright intent is 
subject to constant error and is in danger of 
doing extreme harm. His wife, seeing the same 
conditions — or, more commonly, seeing only a 
part of them, — undergoing the same struggles of 
conscience, may be forced by the conditions of 
her heredity and experience to choose a diamet- 
rically opposed course. Either would be degrad- 
ed forever in his own mind if he should yield to 
the point of view of the other. There may be an 
agreement to disagree ; but when day after day 
the courses of two people are so antagonistic that 
life is a constant surrender of loyalty or ambition 
on one side or the other in order to keep peace, 
the strain on the family ties is severe. This, 
moreover, is a case assuming moral seriousness 
and sincerity; under other conditions, dissension 
is even more likely. It is inevitable, therefore, 
that under normal conditions, even with the same 
ideals of the marriage relation as existed fifty 
years ago, divorces shall increase many fold. The 
development of the moral nature of the commu- 

85 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

nity during the last fifty years should have led to a 
growth in the highest ideal of the marriage re- 
lation itself; and this is actually consistent with 
the growth of divorce. A person dominated by 
the notion of ideal parenthood cannot degrade 
marriage by a makeshift union : he demands that 
if the spiritual union has failed, physical union 
shall end; then legal union is often wisely dis- 
solved. It is to be hoped that marriages will con- 
tinue to be broken until the right point of view 
with regard to marriage shall prevail in the com- 
munity at large. Then there will be less occasion 
for unions to be broken. The real test of com- 
munity misfortune in this regard is not divorces, 
but unhappy marriages. Surely five hundred 
perfect marriages and a hundred divorces is a 
better state than six hundred barely tolerable mar- 
riages and no divorces. Statistics are valueless 
except when we are comparing identical things. 
We must see behind the figures, farther than we 
can yet go, before we allow ourselves to feel 
either alarmed or complacent. 

Lest this theory of divorce and remarriage be 
misunderstood, it may well be summarized : it 
assumes that the old love was dead before any 
new sprang up — for a new love in the sense that 
love has been here defined could not grow up 

86 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

while the old persisted; it assumes that any new 
love is not merely an intellectual belief in the su- 
periority of the newly loved, but has the sacred 
elements common to all types of affection and 
in addition is dominated by the desire to perpetu- 
ate the ideals which the newly loved embodies — 
and, as has been shown, this is something far 
other than mere animal instinct ; finally, it assumes 
that all the old responsibilities to the former hus- 
band or wife — except those of the purely marital 
relation — and to children shall still be served. It 
is obvious that if no divorced persons were re- 
married except under the conditions here given, 
the purity of the marriage relation would be de- 
fended rather than undermined by the greater 
freedom of divorce here suggested. 

It may be well to note, before we leave the mat- 
ter of love and marriage, that although all our 
argument has been based on the nature of par- 
enthood, this theory is wholly consistent with a 
recognition of the beauty of some marriages that 
are childless and of others after the child-bearing 
age has been passed. We have been concerned 
not with all the variations of the marriage rela- 
tion, but only with its origin and essence. We 
have shown love between man and woman to be 
distinguished from other affection by the fact that 

87 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

it desires to join the loved one in perpetuating in 
the world, as best worth while, the body, mind, 
and soul of that loved one. Yet such love may 
exist where such perpetuation is impossible be- 
cause of natural physical inability, or because of 
disability through age, or because of external bar- 
riers. Nature has sought to provide lavishly for 
her own ends, and she has made men and women 
attractive to each other in many ways. In the evo- 
lution of the ages she has differentiated the sexes 
in more ways than the physical. She has made 
woman's character in many ways the complement 
of man's, so that man shall find in woman a satis- 
faction of the lacks that he feels in himself. 
These inevitably attract him. He finds that with 
her the cycle of his life is complete, without her 
nothing is quite full or whole. 

Their union, indeed, may do more than fill out 
his own life. It often more than doubles his life. 
A woman is richer, more attractive to man, if she 
adds in her own person manly virtues and charms, 
such as courage, to those which we call womanly ; 
he is richer, more attractive to woman, if he adds 
her virtues and charms, such as tenderness, to 
those which we call manly. Yet, however a noble 
man and a noble woman may approach each other 
in qualities, spiritual distinction is never lost. A 

88 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

woman may have all the womanly virtues and 
some of the womanly weaknesses, and she may 
have many manly virtues thrown in for good 
measure and be all the more adorable; but the 
masculine vices she must not have or she is un- 
sexed. A man may have all the manly virtues 
and some of the manly weaknesses, and he may 
have many womanly virtues thrown in for good 
measure and be all the stronger for it; but the 
feminine vices he must not h'ave or he is despi- 
cable. The distinction of sex characteristics, then, 
lies here : the womanly virtues are those which a 
woman must have and a man preferably should 
have for good measure; and the womanly weak- 
nesses are those which in limited number are ex- 
cusable in a woman but fatal in a man ; the manly 
virtues are those which a man must have and a 
woman should have for good measure; and a 
man's weaknesses are those which in limited num- 
ber are excusable in him but fatal in a woman. A 
noble woman thus may far more than fill the 
emptiness in a man's soul; she may be to him 
another soul, companion to his own. So far may 
this be true, that even though she cannot bear 
him a child he may feel that the fulfillment of 
their lives together may be better worth while 
than the perpetuation of the soul of any other 

8 9 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

woman. His love for her is something of a trag- 
edy, for it still craves the perpetuation of her soul 
in children ; but it is less a tragedy than would be 
his marriage to another woman while he believes 
the first to be best worth perpetuation. So Na- 
ture, working through her attempt to perpetuate 
the race, has given us a very beautiful thing with 
which perpetuation has really nothing to do. 
This is her bounty. We find it also where men 
and women have passed the age of parenthood. 
The ideal, or the memory, rather than the aim or 
hope, binds them together. If they have children, 
the fruition of their parenthood is one of their 
strong ties. 

The dreariest thing in the world, on the con- 
trary, is the state of those who in late life find 
themselves estranged and look back upon a mar- 
riage which has been a prostitution— an attempt 
to cheat nature, to get what Emerson would call 
the " sensual sweet without the spiritual sweet," 
successful attempts at race suicide. It is an inter- 
esting fact that in more than sixty per cent of 
recent divorces the marriages were childless. 

It is doubtless true that if the only marriages 
contracted were those classed in this chapter as 
perfect, the marriage rate would decline rapidly. 
This might not be a calamity. Few parts of the 

90 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

world are to-day suffering for lack of population, 
and these could be more than satisfied without 
much affecting the surplus in the centers of con- 
gestion. What the world needs is not at all more 
people, but more people begotten and trained in 
ideal conditions. It may be true that in the com- 
plexity of modern life a man finds it harder to 
see in woman, or in a particular woman, the sat- 
isfaction of that ideal which only, if he is sensi- 
tive, he desires to embody in offspring. The 
woman whom any man can adore is farther to 
seek — just because modern conditions have made 
women less like each other, and men less like each 
other, and so a happy mating harder to find ; but 
in just that degree is such a woman better worth 
the seeking, more likely to satisfy the soul, more 
likely to be noble — for she is the product of the 
progress of the race. The difference between the 
noblest woman and the lowest woman is yearly 
increasing: the low is as low as the lowest ever 
was, but the noble is nobler than ever was the 
noble before, for modern conditions have brought 
out in her new strength and new kindness and 
new purity from new trials and temptations that 
her older sisters never knew. The lowest woman 
is wholly dominated by notions which the noblest 
woman never even knew, never could recognize. 

91 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

The difference between them is world-wide. One 
will give for a song what the other will keep with 
her life; one will seek at the cost of the jewel of 
her soul what the other will shun as the bitterest 
curse. These are not figures of rhetoric : they are 
facts of human nature. They are true of men as 
well as of women. While these things are true 
perfect love between man and woman will not die 
from the earth. Like responds to like. Indeed, a 
little better than this is true. Like responds to 
what it thinks a little better than its like. The 
appeal is always upward. No man ever loves a 
woman whom he does not think more noble than 
himself, and no woman ever loves except, in her 
own mind, above her. This does not mean the 
craving of the moth for the star, for we cannot 
comprehend what is much above us. This up- 
ward faith is one of the beautiful things of life. 
It is one of the springs of human progress. If 
marriage and parenthood never occurred except 
where such love prevails, births would decline 
but the race would be happier. 

Sometimes we hear the statement that a re- 
duced marriage rate means increase of sexual 
immorality. Such a statement is based on a curi- 
ous notion of morality. If the mere animal in- 
stinct of lust is so overpowering that men must 

92 



THE MARRIAGE TIE 

breed like swine to keep them from degradation 
that puts them below the swine, the sooner they 
exterminate themselves by vice the better. No 
woman with any sense of the dignity in mother- 
hood wishes to be made a mother merely to sat- 
isfy the lust of a man who would otherwise go to 
a woman of the streets. No pure woman wishes 
to surrender her body to a man whose lust has so 
dominated him that he cannot live in the holy at- 
mosphere of restrained exalted passion. Woman- 
hood is not a cesspool for the lust of man. Lust 
satisfied in marriage is as immoral as lust satisfied 
elsewhere : unwelcome children begotten in lustful 
wedlock are as much the offspring of prostitution 
as are bastards. The man who cannot contain 
himself is no mate for any pure woman, and im- 
morality lies in his marriage to her far more than 
in his drowning himself and his accursed race in 
any sink of iniquity. Our task is not to find an 
outlet for lust, but to dignify marriage and par- 
enthood. Civilized men can live in purity and 
yet beget no more children than they can support 
and train for efficient citizenship. The test of civ- 
ilization is the ability for this. 

The foundation of our hope for the future lies, 
then, in recognizing perfect love in the marriage 
relation as the first spring of progress. 

93 



CHAPTER V 

THE TRAINING OF POWERS 



an 



1 E have considered in some detail our 
hope as it is related to the influence of 
heredity, We are concerned next with our hope 
as the American is affected by what he absorbs 
from the world outside himself. The most ob- 
vious outside influence, perhaps only because it 
is early, is the school. The others we shall have 
occasion to examine later. To enter into a gen- 
eral discussion of the problems of education would 
be entirely beyond the scope of this particular dis- 
cussion; but a consideration of a few fundamental 
principles is necessary that we may see how far 
w T e are meeting the American ideal. 

Bearing in mind again the fact that above 
everything else we insist upon liberty, brother- 
hood, and democracy, we must see that only a 
sort of education which shall open the eyes of 
the boy and the girl to the world as a whole can 
serve its purpose. We have seen in an earlier 
chapter that all men are just what heredity and 

94 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

circumstance have made them, and that we can- 
not judge them with censure or praise. Since 
none can make himself, and since it is beyond his 
power to choose anything except out of his own 
knowledge of what is good, it is essential that to 
every boy and every girl shall be given an oppor- 
tunity to see for himself the best in the world. 
This means, if it means anything, that he shall 
be given opportunity to observe what other men 
and women have found to be the best way of 
doing or getting the good things. The tendency 
in modern educational discussion has been to say 
that it is absurd to offer to the boy who is to 
be a blacksmith a course in Latin or Greek rather 
than a course in manual training. This criticism 
of old-fashioned methods may be both justified, 
on one hand, and absurd, on the other. If it is 
right in assuming that a blacksmith can find no 
value in the classics, it is justified; but if that 
assumption is ill-founded, it is absurd. Surely if 
the boy ought to have the classics, he had best 
get them in school ; for he cannot easily get them 
outside of school and he can easily learn black- 
smithing in a shop. We are trying in these days 
to raise craftsmanship to new dignity. We shall 
never do so if we assume offhand that a crafts- 
man is unable as a man to profit by a liberal edu- 

95 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

cation. What he needs as a craftsman is one 
thing : what he needs merely as a man may be a 
far different and far bigger thing. 

A further difficulty lies in the fact that 
we cannot know T which boy should be a black- 
smith. A boy's fitness for any specific calling is 
not determined at the time Latin and Greek are 
offered to him. He cannot choose for himself 
except so far as his heredity and his environment 
have chosen for him. If there is in his nature 
that thing which shall respond to the Greek ap- 
peal, he may become a college professor, or a 
writer, or a teacher of Greek art, or a sculptor 
who shall embody the Greek ideal, or a crafts- 
man who shall embody in his handicraft the Greek 
spirit. It is beyond the power of any human 
being to tell what that boy shall be at twenty, 
thirty, forty, seventy years of age. Just because 
wise choice is entirely beyond him and he will 
make out of his inherited nature just what out- 
side influence enables him to make, it is the duty 
of the community, so far as we recognize any 
duty on the part of the community, to give him 
absolutely the greatest enlightenment possible as 
to the course of human life. His power to grasp 
what is set before him will naturally determine 
the point at which the offering of liberal education 

9 6 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

shall cease. When we have given him all the en- 
lightenment he can profitably absorb, he is in a 
position to direct, as wisely as his nature will 
allow, his own course. 

How much does any one of us know about the 
proper course of human life for another? How 
much has any man in the past known about the 
proper course of human life? It is a common- 
place to say that no man living knows one thou- 
sandth part of what there is in the world worth 
knowing and possible to know. The wisest men 
of all time have made wretched mistakes. It is 
certainly true in the history of the world that 
nine tenths of the people who have set up their 
detailed dictum as to how life ought to be lived 
have by the present day been convicted as wrong. 
Neither the individual nor the community as a 
whole has any business to dictate and enforce a 
way of life. The only guide we have is our own 
experience and our own interpretation of the ex- 
perience of the past. All we can do wisely in our 
teaching is to show what has been learned in the 
past. Since the function of education is to fur- 
nish the maximum of opportunity, its only scien- 
tific method is to present to the young the truth 
about what men have learned of the art of living. 
In a sense, history is the one proper subject for 

97 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

education ; but history, as it chances, embraces all 
the results of human activity. One cannot teach 
the art of writing simple English sentences with- 
out teaching a fact of history, namely, that men 
have discovered that certain words put together 
in certain ways produce on the mind of the reader 
certain effects. The same thing is true in science. 
The moment we set up arbitrary standards and 
say that it is our function to teach others how 
life ought to be lived, we are assuming a wisdom 
which is the height of criminal egotism. 

It is true that progress has never come from 
any source but throwing down a notion of the 
past and setting up a new one; but the public 
school-teacher is the last man in the world who 
has any right to set up a new arbitrary standard, 
for he is training a new generation which must 
set up standards of its own. It is the function of 
the teacher to interpret the past, to see just what 
men of the past got out of that past, to see, if 
possible, how far they failed to get out of the 
past what it might have had for them. If he is 
successful in his teaching, the new generation can 
do its own constructing. The teacher may strive 
in his own life to set up a standard for himself, 
to show in his teaching why under his interpre- 
tation of history that standard seems to him the 

9 8 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

best, but to try to influence the new generation so 
that it shall have a bent toward the standard 
which he has set up for himself is to try to cheat 
the new generation of its • inalienable liberty. 
For him, moreover, to think that he knows better 
what is good for the new generation than it can 
know for itself is a fundamental violation of the 
spirit of fraternity. It is pure egotism. So far, on 
the other hand, as he can help that new generation 
to see what he has got out of life, so far as he can 
help it to see how he has failed to get the best 
things out of life, he is doing it a real service. 

In our examination of the power of choice be- 
tween good and evil, we saw r that failure to choose 
wisely is always due to a failure to see straight, 
to feel truly, to think logically. The aim of edu- 
cation, then, since it can only begin where hered- 
ity stops, must be to cultivate these three powers. 
If education is to help the coming generations not 
only to get out of the past the best that the past 
can offer, but also to use this in living their own 
lives, it should be concerned not only with the 
handing down of mere facts acquired from the 
past, but also with the cultivation of power to use 
facts. Altogether too much educational effort, 
especially in the last twenty-five years, has been 
directed to the less important end of this double 
8 99 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

purpose. Advertisements which promise " a col- 
lege education in ten volumes " are a witness of 
the exaggerated notion of the value of facts. The 
mere truth that facts can be put into a book, 
whereas mental power is only in living brains, is 
proof enough of the comparative importance of 
each. It is true, indeed, that the brain needs a 
large equipment of ready facts to keep it from 
unconscious error; but these facts are only to 
support the application of the power: they are 
absolutely valueless without the power to make 
use of them. They are subordinate to the rea- 
soning faculty. A large part of the teaching of 
facts in recent years has assumed that facts are 
valuable for their own sake, and has been con- 
ducted in such fashion as to prevent the develop- 
ment of the power of reasoning. The facts have 
been made unduly easy to learn, and the power to 
see, to ponder, to reason, has been stagnating 
from disuse. Our young people have been left 
without the power to apply their learning to their 
own problems, to see things in wholeness and in 
due relation one to another, and to distinguish a 
reasonable proposition from an absurd one. To 
remedy this must be the first educational reform, 
and fortunately it seems already to be coming. 
It is the fashion to talk of the need for prac- 
ioo 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

tical things in education. Not always can the 
practical man tell what he means by practical 
things, and not always can he recognize them. 
Somehow in the popular mind " practical " has 
come to mean, usually, nothing more than imme- 
diate, obvious, simple. As a matter of fact, com- 
paratively little of life is immediate, or obvious, 
or simple — though to the superficial observer it all 
appears so. Removing a cataract from a patient's 
eye by a quick stroke of the knife is to the chance 
observer immediate, obvious, simple. To the man 
who knows, it is a matter of long-trained, con- 
stantly freshened power, requiring nerve and dar- 
ing. It is wholly practical in the operation, but 
nine practical men in every ten would scoff at the 
process by which the power is attained if they did 
not know of the exact purpose. Similarly, it is 
the fashion to scoff at the training of the imagina- 
tion. " I don't want my boy to fritter away his 
time on things that don't exist : I want him to 
know things as they are," says the practical man, 
He is quite right. He simply doesn't happen to 
know that no man can see things as they are un- 
less he can also think about things that are not. 
The only things we know directly are the things 
that are with us here and now; but these are usu- 
ally the little unimportant things. In practical 

10 1 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

life no man lives most of the time with the big 
things. He lives practically with the meat and 
drink, the bricks and mortar, the paint and can- 
vas, the ink and paper ; but the real things of his 
experience are the physical life, the home, the 
inspiring picture, the thought that fills the life. 
These are too big for the mere selfish here and 
now. Only as the man gets away from the self, 
the here, and the now, does he ever rise above 
the animal. The most practical man lives con- 
stantly in the atmosphere of things that are not — 
things that he is trying to prepare for being. If 
he could not see beyond the actual, he would be 
the unpractical man. The practical man is a 
dreamer. He sees in imagination the thing that 
is not, he sees it as a whole, he sees the obstacles 
that do not exist but will arise when new forces, 
not now in play, are applied to situations that 
have not yet occurred. Without imagination he 
would have stood helpless like a hungry dog be- 
fore a closed refrigerator. Imagination is a 
power not only for the preacher, the writer, the 
statesman, but for the engineer, the manufacturer, 
the merchant, the artisan, the housewife. The 
practical man who denounces studies that culti- 
vate the imagination is simply blind. What we 
want is not that pupils shall learn about what is 

1 02 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

not, but that they shall get the power to seize 
and hold and ponder what is remote. Only so can 
they see straight or feel truly. 

We have made much of the function of dom- 
inant notions — of notions that possess the mind to 
the exclusion of all conflicting notions. Some of 
these are false and evil, crowding out the truth ; 
they are obsessions. As a safeguard against 
them nothing equals a good imagination. The 
obsession is always direct, here, now. It fills the 
present mind. A good imagination — and imag- 
ination is partly memory — presents another pic- 
ture which pushes the obsession hard and may 
oust it altogether. We have seen that the choice 
of evil is made often under an obsession that the 
evil is worth while. Whatever will take the thing 
in its wholeness and show it as it is for all time, 
in all places, for all men, must drive out the ob- 
session of the petty self, the petty here, and the 
petty now. 

It is a fact that most of the evils that men are 
crying out against are traceable to obsessions, and 
that most of these obsessions are traceable to a 
lack of imagination on the part of the perpe- 
trators. To give a concrete illustration, the re- 
cent common disasters due to recklessness of 
drivers of motor cars are due unquestionably not 

103 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

to the cruelty of the drivers, not fundamentally 
to their natural carelessness, but to the fact that 
at the time when a risk is taken the anticipated 
joy of successfully handling a machine under haz- 
ardous circumstances has taken such possession 
of them that their imaginations are not able to 
grasp the probabilities or even the possibilities of 
suffering, anguish, and tragedy which a failure of 
their calculations will bring upon some members 
of the community. There is not one man in a 
thousand who, if his imagination could see the 
full meaning of the crushing of the life of a child, 
the mangling of a wage earner supporting a fam- 
ily, the horror of a timid old lady who is saved 
from harm by the skillful manipulation of a car, 
would not forego any pleasure that he might have 
in his reckless race rather than risk bringing these 
things upon others. Imagination is not one of the 
luxuries of life. It is one of the safeguards. 

Similarly, the man of business who takes lib- 
erties with control placed in his hands, and by it 
raises the price of the necessities of life, or upsets 
the regular course of business, does so only be- 
cause he cannot grasp in his imagination the con- 
sequences of his act. If he could see the families 
struggling in grinding poverty to care for the in- 
valid, to educate the children, to pay off the mort- 

104 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

gage on the home, he would find himself unable 
to undertake many of the ventures which now 
fascinate him because of the opportunity to play 
a big game with other men of his own class. He 
is obsessed with the fighting instinct, and as long 
as it lasts he is unable to grasp any idea conflict- 
ing with it unless that idea is thrust upon him 
vigorously from outside. It is notable that many 
men whose public business transactions have 
brought calamity to innumerable families beyond 
their ken have been in their private life, with 
those whom they personally knew, altogether 
thoughtful, considerate, and generous. The big- 
ness and the remoteness of their business relations 
have rendered these men unable, without a dis- 
tinct play of the imagination, to grasp the full 
meaning of what they are doing. 

The two illustrations given may be taken as 
typical. The carelessness of drivers shows the ef- 
fect of a momentary obsession which seems to the 
person concerned a trifling thing ; the heedlessness 
of business managers is a more or less permanent 
obsession in a recognized big thing. In one case * 
the chance of harm seems so small that the trifle 
is not worth considering, and in the other the 
very bigness of the thing gives it an importance 
in the eye of the doer so great that he neglects 

105 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

the fact that other things of an entirely different 
nature may be even bigger in the eye of the com- 
munity. The thousand and one other evils 
against which men cry out will be found on ex- 
amination to show the same signs — an obsession 
on the part of some one which makes it impos- 
sible for him to see with his limited imagination 
the full truth about the thing in which he is the 
principal actor. 

It is obvious, from what has been already said, 
that the most important thing which can be given 
any child is a power made up of three elements- 
first, physical strength and health, which must be 
the basis of all other power ; second, intellectual 
strength, which shall enable him to face a new 
situation, and in it distinguish between the fac- 
tors which are like those with which he has 
had previous experience and those which are new 
and must be related to old experiences for a new 
judgment; and third, imaginative strength which 
shall enable him to see back into the past, and on 
into the future, and among his fellows of to-day, 
so that he shall know just what relation his 
experiences bear to human experience as a whole. 

To give all these is no small task. The capacity 
to receive them, moreover, is different in different 
individuals. In any attempt to educate the race, 

1 06 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

economy of effort must be observed. Certain na- 
tures are incapable of developing beyond rather 
narrow limits, and an educational system which 
shall attempt the same sort of training for all 
pupils is squandering energy. It is of the ut- 
most importance to the community, however, that 
everyone shall have the opportunity to develop as 
far as his nature will allow. It is not always easy 
to determine when the limit has been reached. The 
only safe rule is to continue the education of each 
pupil as long as there is sign of advance com- 
mensurate with the cost. Even in a lifetime no 
one can learn all there is to learn about the art 
of living; but a lifetime devoted to study, with 
no time left for the practice of living, would be 
wasted. Each member of society should receive 
such education as will make him most efficient as 
a member of society; but with all men, after a 
certain age, the best school is practical experience 
of life. The schooling of each should progress, 
then, to that point at which he loses as much 
from the limitation of his practical activity as he 
gains from the pursuit of his scholastic studies. 
The task is to determine at what point, for each 
person, study shall give place to work. Educa- 
tion lies in both study and work, and both should 
continue till death; but the public concern is to 

107 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

determine in each case at what point the education 
of the individual and his best usefulness to society 
comes chiefly through work rather than through 
study. At that point his scholastic education at 
public expense should cease — and no sooner. 

The objection is often raised that the commun- 
ity cannot afford such general training as is here 
advocated. The community can always afford to 
make good citizens ; and though it is true that the 
old-fashioned training for culture has often been 
given to young people who have become very bad 
citizens, no evidence has ever been given that the 
school produces the evil. It is a common remark 
that schooling does not produce virtue, and that 
intelligence does not assure morality. It is not to 
be expected, except by those who believe that en- 
vironment can do everything, that any training 
will wholly eradicate evil inheritance. It is a fact, 
moreover, that our attempts to give the higher 
education have been lacking in more ways than 
most of us have yet realized. There is more to 
education even than the three kinds of power 
already mentioned — physical, intellectual, imag- 
inative. These three kinds of strength are of con- 
sequence only in relation to the subjects with 
which they shall be concerned. It is of no con- 
sequence to the community that a man shall have 

1 08 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

intellectual power except as he uses it on subjects 
with which the community is concerned. It is, 
indeed, of little consequence to the man himself 
that he shall have powers unless he uses them. 
Intellectual power applied without relation to the 
other powers, or applied in wrong directions, may 
do dire harm. Education fails unless it supplies 
a unity or balance of powers and also supplies an 
understanding of w T hat uses of those powers 
man's experience of the past has shown to be 
wise. Nothing less than this can be called a fair 
introduction to the art of living — an introduction 
that every boy and every girl may fairly demand. 
We are, therefore, quite as much concerned with 
the relations of a man to the outside world as we 
are with his powers for their own sake. The real 
question is how he shall use his powers and, 
therefore, what should be his point of view about 
the world he lives in. He must know certain 
facts about man's experience with the outside 
world. Here, and here only, is the value of facts. 
Every man has three kinds of relations with 
the outer world — aesthetic, social, moral. The 
aesthetic are concerned with all those things which 
give him pleasure through an appreciation of ex- 
cellence; the social affect his power to get along 
with other men in such a way as to get from them 

109 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

assistance in bringing about his own aims; the 
moral determine his attitude toward his fellow 
men as related to right and wrong. It is not 
enough that the man's mind shall work properly 
in these relations when the materials are before 
him; the mind should be so equipped that auto- 
matically, on the presentation of a problem, the 
fundamental and universal considerations shall 
arise before him and shall dominate him. He 
may then relate the peculiar circumstances of his 
own case to the general principles. He should be 
equipped with these fundamental notions by a 
general training which shall teach him the best 
that man's experience has discovered about these 
relations. Then his own experience can be ad- 
justed, as he thinks wise, to the experience of 
mankind, or he may be in a position to launch 
out on conduct that is original. It is absurd to 
think that any man, of however great powers, is 
competent to settle questions involving relations 
with the outside world unless he has learned the 
experiences of mankind in such matters in the 
past. It is for this reason that general education 
should include a liberal instruction in the elements 
of aesthetics, social relations, and ethics. Indeed, 
no man is quite a safe member of society until 
he has considered the most important truths that 

no 



THE TRAINING OF POWERS 

the past has learned about these things. We are 
quite as much concerned about the welfare of the 
community as we are about the individual. He 
may not care to know about these things; but 
since we know that his conduct is necessarily 
governed by his dominant notions, we may in- 
sist that he shall at least have given a hearing to 
the notions that other men have cherished. We 
have occasion to examine in some detail, there- 
fore, the relation of each of these three fields — 
aesthetics, social relations, and ethics — to Amer- 
ican life and our American hope. This we shall 
do in the three chapters immediately following. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PLEASURE IN THINGS 

IT takes some boldness to assert that the 
American is by nature adapted to appreciate 
art. To discover his fitness for it, we must learn 
first what he naturally finds interesting, and sec- 
ond what is the essential thing in art. In the 
last analysis, we shall find both these things to 
be the same — namely, excellence. We have com- 
monly read that Americans have no regard for 
excellence, but rather are concerned only with 
bigness, and showiness, and cheapness. It does 
not occur to the critic that bigness and showiness 
and cheapness are in their proper places them- 
selves excellences. We are prone to forget that 
all things are merely relative. It does not follow 
that because a man regards bigness he has no eye 
for delicacy. No one desires delicacy in a moun- 
tain. No one, on the other hand, would expect 
a person to be a particularly competent critic of 
miniatures if he had devoted himself chiefly to the 
study of mural decoration. 

112 



THE PLEASURE IN THINGS 

The ordinary American will deny vehemently 
that he is indifferent to excellence ; and he is right. 
The ground of criticism against him is merely 
that he is acquainted with excellence of only a 
few kinds. There is no competent engineer who 
does not appreciate excellent construction in a 
bridge ; there is no competent manufacturer who 
does not appreciate excellent workmanship in a 
manufactured article ; there is no competent mer- 
chant who does not appreciate a masterful stroke 
in conducting a buying or a selling campaign; 
there are few competent mechanics who do not 
appreciate a beautiful machine. Each of these, 
moreover, is able to see something more than 
mere money making or even utility in the thing 
which he admires : he has a definite notion of fin- 
ish, of proportion, of delicate adjustment; he has 
a definite notion of what is to him beauty for its 
own sake — that is to say, a job done a little bet- 
ter than merely well enough for utility. 

It chances that just here — in beauty for its own 
sake, over and above utility — lies the essence of 
art. This is not the place to expound art princi- 
ples. Our real concern is simply to see how it is 
possible to increase the pleasure which can be 
found in the things of life, to make better worth 
while man's relations with the world of things. 

ii3 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

First of all, we must recognize that all art is a 
method of communication between men. The 
painter, the sculptor, the musician, the poet, have 
something to say, or at least they have something 
to show. The aim of art is, as Lowell expressed 
it in " The Vision of Sir Launfal," to build " a 
bridge from dreamland." The artist has found 
pleasure in a thought or in a thing of beauty. He 
wishes to share that pleasure with other people. 
He may have a message of inspiration to offer 
his fellows. It chances that for him the best way 
to make others share in his emotions is through 
one of the senses. The emotions that have first 
had play in himself he arouses, through his art, 
in another. The bridge must be built from his 
spirit, by means of a physical sight or sound, to 
the spirit of the second person. The art is good 
or bad just in proportion as the means are adapt- 
ed to the end. No means of appeal should be 
neglected. 

The ambitious painter, for example, is con- 
cerned not merely to represent an object, but to 
represent it in such a light, in such surroundings, 
and in such relation to other things, that it shall 
appear in those aspects which are to him most 
characteristic — at least those that seem just now 
best worth recording, — and at the same time he 

114 



THE PLEASURE IN THINGS 

wishes to produce a picture which shall as a 
whole be most satisfying; that is, he wishes his 
painting to give most enduring pleasure as a 
picture and not merely as a representation of the 
object painted. As this second object may seem 
unduly finical, let us examine it a little. The 
artist wishes to make the widest possible ap- 
peal. He wishes to throw in excellences for good 
measure. For instance, the object may appear at 
such a place in the picture that it shall have just 
the right emphasis ; the colors in the picture may 
be related to one another so as to give distinct 
pleasure to the eye; the lines may tend to bind 
the picture together as a unit rather than cut it up 
into bits, or tire the eye with fruitless pointings ; 
the masses may balance so that the picture shall 
not be one-sided or top-heavy, and so divert at- 
tention from its main purpose ; little touches may 
emphasize the essential spirit of the picture — such 
as solitude or companionship, tenderness or sever- 
ity, cheerfulness or melancholy, dignity or light- 
someness. Often the addition of a bit of color, 
the change of a color, the addition of a figure, 
the omission of a detail, the shifting of a light, 
or the destruction of a line, makes the difference 
between effectiveness and failure. The quest for 
these is the quest for excellence ; and as excellence 
9 115 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

is worth while, these are worth while. The artist 
is never quite satisfied with the thing he has done, 
because he knows that in the nature of the case it 
could be done better if only he or some one else 
had the wit and the skill to get just that better 
way. That better way would give his message 
greater vitality. 

This does not mean, however, that the test for 
a work of art is the effect on any particular ob- 
server, for this observer may chance from defi- 
cient or peculiar circumstances to see something 
which other men and women would not see, and 
yet this something may be just what the artist 
was trying to show. In other words, an untrained 
observer may find pleasure in the work of an un- 
trained producer. Their similarity of circum- 
stance enables them to understand each other. As 
a matter of fact, this is a fortunate occurrence; 
yet it is not the most fortunate thing that may 
happen. Chance is too uncertain as a basis for 
any art. Indeed, in the work of a master the 
untrained observer is likely to find less pleasure 
than in the work of the unskillful artist, for 
he is likely to be puzzled by things which he can- 
not understand ; the trained observer, on the other 
hand, in such work finds for his admiration many 
things which not only did not appear in the work 

116 



THE PLEASURE IN THINGS 

of the unskillful artist, but were not seen by the 
untrained observer in the work of the master. 
This sort of thing is familiar to the engineer, 
the business man, and the mechanic, each in 
his own field. They enjoy showing their work 
to men who have been initiated, and they do 
not expect appreciation from the know-noth- 
ing. 

It is natural for many men to say that they 
are not interested in any artistic thing. They do 
not see the good of art, they find no pleasure in 
it, and, therefore, to them it is all nonsense. This 
is the point of view of the so-called practical man. 
Such a man cannot, on the other hand, understand 
another man who says that the stock-market quo- 
tations, and the baseball score, and the price of 
copper, are indifferent to him. Unless the man 
is by nature deficient in the color sense, in a sense 
of proportion, in a sense of pitch and rhythm, 
he is quite as competent to enjoy a work of art 
as the other to find interest in business statistics. 
Yet it is a common thing for a man of artistic 
temperament to find interest in the stock market 
and other business affairs; as soon as he comes 
to see that any of these things mean anything to 
him, either through personal welfare or merely 
through intellectual understanding, he is able to 

117 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

enjoy them. Similarly, the man without aes- 
thetic training, unless he is hampered as already 
suggested, finds interest in matters of art as soon 
as he has placed himself in a position to recog- 
nize their excellence. The characteristic pleasure 
of American men, at least that which appeals with 
keenest delight to the greatest number, seems to 
be watching a baseball game ; yet it is well known 
that a person uninitiated in the technic of the 
game finds little of interest except the enjoyment 
of others. No one expects to enjoy what he does 
not understand. In no other field than that of art 
does a man usually decline to become initiated 
merely because he is not interested. The fact is 
simply that the American has a prejudice against 
art, and this prejudice, like most prejudices, may 
be removed by enlightenment. Only one who is 
initiated can see just when a picture is successful, 
because only the initiated knows what might have 
been done otherwise. We may again fall back 
upon our early statement that history is the most 
serviceable study. The only man who knows the 
real effectiveness of a picture is he who has 
learned by experience, and by studying the ex- 
perience of others, that certain combinations of 
line, mass, and color have proved more effective 
than others. If he is a painter, he is able to pro- 

118 



THE PLEASURE IN THINGS 

duce a picture more satisfying than is the man 
who has only his own notions to rely upon; if he 
is an observer of pictures, he is able to understand 
why the artist chose the particular arrangement, 
color, and lighting which appear, and this under- 
standing gives him a delight in good workman- 
ship akin to that which the engineer finds in the 
bridge, and the merchant in the campaign. This 
delight is unfailing because it is based on a fun- 
damental trait of human nature; everyone enjoys 
recognizing a familiar principle in a new thing — 
a principle that he understands, in a thing that 
he knows to be good. It is the recognition of an 
old friend in a new guise. This is doubly a de- 
light when we find, as we do in great art, that the 
excellence of the presentation, a pleasure in itself, 
is only a bridge for the passage to us of a great 
thought or a great emotion. 

Akin to the pleasures of art are the pleasures of 
purely intellectual pursuits. Everyone can fancy 
the sources of satisfaction fgr the hunter; but 
comparatively few know that similar to these are 
the delights of an intellectual quest, either in sci- 
ence, in history, or in abstract reasoning. When 
one realizes that such a quest involves a plan of 
campaign, a watchfulness for elusive facts, a 
marshaling of forces, a wresting of information 

119 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

from seemingly unwilling treasure houses, and 
that all this means exciting moments of sus- 
pense, disappointed hopes, the satisfaction of 
doing a difficult task well, and sometimes con- 
spicuous victory, one sees that it adds to the joy 
of living. 

Many of the pleasures of life fade with advanc- 
ing years ; this is universally true with the pleas- 
ures of the senses, for after the body has begun 
its decline the senses are less keen. This is not 
true, however, of cesthetic and intellectual pleas- 
ures, for as one's experience is enlarged, one 
finds increasing ability to recognize excellence, 
and increasing sympathy for all attempts at ex- 
cellence. In cultivation of these, then, one is lay- 
ing up treasure for the declining years. Many 
an octogenarian has found through these things 
more zest in life than is found by the average 
youth. 

The appreciation of excellence, moreover, may 
be made in another way a factor in the joy of liv- 
ing. It enables us not only to enjoy the work of 
others, but — possibly to even greater degree — to 
find joy in labor, joy in doing our own work in 
such fashion that it shall satisfy aesthetic and in- 
tellectual ambition. This gives labor a new dig- 
nity and life a new purpose. 

120 



THE PLEASURE IN THINGS 

The pleasure in excellence is not confined to 
the product of human skill and intelligence, how- 
ever. Nature is supplying us on every hand with 
the materials for aesthetic and intellectual delight. 
It is a sad fact that most persons are unaware of 
the satisfaction in a sunset, in a bit of foliage, in 
the song and plumage of a bird, in the wonders 
of a flower's anatomy, in the movement of heav- 
enly bodies, in the voice of the wind and the 
storm, and in the aspects of the sea. These things 
may be friends, and they are always appearing 
in new guises. The delight in them is constant, 
unfailing. It is true that they are not in- 
teresting to those who do not know them, but 
nothing is interesting until it is understood. 
Their friendship, once made, never fails, and it 
has sympathy for every mood — comfort, cheer, 
joyousness, inspiration; and in these days of 
multiplying nature-books one finds introduction 
easy. 

If life is to mean all it should, a part of the 
education not only of every child but of every 
man and woman should be a growing acquaint- 
ance with what other men and women, not only 
in the past but to-day, have found enjoyable in 
the quest for excellence, and in the perfect work 
of nature. It is in the American character to 

121 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

enjoy the good things of life. At least two of 
the American ideals — liberty and brotherhood — 
are contributive to such enjoyment and stimu- 
lative of good work; for liberty gives the play to 
individuality, and brotherhood gives the broad 
sympathy which is essential for any art life. We 
need a realization that our passion for excellence 
can be refined by greater interest in the standards 
which men of the past have learned to be most 
satisfying to human enjoyment. We do not need 
to imitate the past, but we should at least profit 
by it. We have been as a people very largely 
without standards. We have failed to see the 
need of them. We are coming to see that an ap- 
preciation of excellence is capable of cultivation, 
and that though the cultivation costs something 
in time and energy, it is worth while. We take 
time to learn to enjoy other things, as chess, 
whist, bridge, tennis, golf. These are all dull at 
first; but beauty is attractive from the start. A 
love of it not only increases directly the pleasures 
of living, but is a factor in the progress of the 
race. It stimulates the imagination, which, as we 
have seen, is essential to any understanding of 
anything beyond the mere self, here, and now ; it 
refines the passions by showing that the primitive 
and the obvious are not necessarily the best; and 

122 



THE PLEASURE IN THINGS 

it spiritualizes the ideals, for though it works 
through the senses, the senses are only the bridges 
to carry over the emotion to the spirit, and the 
pleasure lies not in the senses but in the spiritual 
idea. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 



UH 



*E turn next to the second of the rela- 
tions of the individual to the outside 
world — that is, his relation to his fellows in mat- 
ters social. We are concerned in it with one of 
our fundamental American ideals, brotherhood. 
Xo one denies that this is an American ideal. Our 
concern here is to see how far it is or may be 
made a fact as well as an ideal. 

We are coming in these days to recognize as an 
element in success a thing which has always been 
powerful but little considered. We are often told 
that this or that successful business man owes his 
achievements in large measure to his sound judg- 
ment of men and his skill in dealing with them. 
Tact has always been recognized as a rare social 
asset, but not until lately has it been considered 
in a scheme of education. We have been in the 
habit of considering it one of the things that come 
by nature or not at all. 

Yet it is true that certain principles of adjust- 
124 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

ing our relations with our fellow men are obvious 
and fundamental. These can be learned not only 
out of our own experience, but also out of the 
experience of others. That is to say, many of the 
methods of desirable social adjustment can be 
taught. An equipment of facts concerning hu- 
man nature and human experience is essential for 
anyone who is to live among men whether for 
social pleasure, for individual attainment, or for 
service to the community. These facts must be 
not only in the brain, ready for use when re- 
quired : they must be so far a part of the mental 
habit, or second nature, that the adjustment of 
one's relations to one's fellows is to great degree 
automatic. In social affairs there is normally no 
time for consideration of each word, attitude, act. 
The relations between individuals are at any par- 
ticular moment too subtle, too evanescent, for the 
logic of the situation to work itself out. One 
must be in touch with one's fellow through the 
more sensitive parts of one's nature. One must 
feel rather than reason out the bond that binds 
one to the other. Always some bond is there. 
The appreciation of that bond, the quickness to 
recognize it, the sensitiveness to its weakening, 
can come only through an experience directed at 
least in part to that end. Only the hermit can 

12^ 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

dispense with at least a minimum of social skill. 
The real social understanding involves a recog- 
nition of certain things about each of our fellows. 
These things are of four sorts : first, the elements 
in him that are common to all humanity; second, 
the individual characteristics in him that make for 
a better humanity — and practically every man has 
some; next, the special limitations of his indi- 
vidual nature which prevent him from attaining 
all that may well be hoped for him ; finally, those 
peculiarities of his experience that affect his re- 
lation to us. All or any of these may require 
us to adjust our speech, our attitude, our acts, to 
his power to understand us. His power to under- 
stand us, moreover, is likely to vary with his pres- 
ent moods as well as with his past experiences. 
We must know how his dominant notions are 
likely to react to our point of view. We must 
realize that certain of our opinions or ambitions 
are direct results of certain of our own experi- 
ences, and we must not expect those people who 
have missed such experiences to adopt readily our 
opinions or ambitions. We must realize that cer- 
tain experiences of others are likely to lead to 
certain prejudices; and we must not expect to 
overcome those prejudices by dogmatic methods. 
We must realize that certain moods are not favor- 

126 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

able to certain desires;' and we must adopt meth- 
ods to dispel the moods, or await favorable 
seasons. 

In a sense, this training for social skill is in 
reality nothing but a training in human sympathy. 
It is merely a help in the recognition of the full 
meaning of brotherhood. Unfortunately Judas 
Iscariot was not the only one of his kind, and it 
may well be believed that many a successful busi- 
ness man has used his understanding of his fellow 
men for their undoing. The understanding, that 
is to say, was in the intellect, and used the fellow 
for selfish ends. If the sense of brotherhood had 
been further developed so as to reach to the sym- 
pathy — the fellow feeling — the common good 
would have loomed bigger than the individual 
gain. In other words, as has been already sug- 
gested, the imagination had not been at work on 
the facts that the intellect knew. These cases, 
then, illustrate the abuse of a principle by a 
merely partial application of it. They show a 
knowledge of how to use the common elements 
in humanity, but not a knowledge of the real 
meaning of brotherhood. 

Singularly, many who abhor such neglect of 
one part of the principle, and are full of the aims 
of brotherhood, are equally neglectful of the other 

127 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

part, and scorn to use a sense of brotherhood as 
a means. Some of the most kind-hearted people 
in the world are among the least tactful : they 
hurt where they would heal; they irritate where 
they would soothe; they fail in their efforts to 
do good because they cannot cooperate success- 
fully with others. They consider themselves too 
honest to be tactful. In reality, they are only 
so well wrapped in self-content that their nerves 
cannot be touched by the personality of others. 

The real spirit of fraternity has a double aspect. 
It gives one an understanding of one's fellow, and 
this enables one to work with one's fellow in ad- 
vancing both selfish and unselfish purposes; but 
as its essence is sympathy with one's fellow, it 
tends constantly to eliminate the selfish. It be- 
comes more and more a matter of the heart. All 
the true affections are its manifestation. In no 
case does affection persist unless it grows out of 
a feeling for the common elements of humanity; 
and in no case is it wholly happy unless it is mani- 
fested so as to recognize also the traits peculiar 
to the individual. 

Out of the social instinct as it stretches toward 
individuals grows that bigger instinct which em- 
braces humanity. Only as a man is bathed in 
it does he get out of life all that it has to offer — 

128 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

the sense of membership in a vast whole, moving 
toward a goal that he may not wholly understand, 
contributing his little to the spirit of the time, 
influenced by that spirit which he helps create, 
sharing with others emotions that they under- 
stand in part as he does and in part as he does 
not. He can understand himself only as he un- 
derstands and feels the thrill of the common life 
of which he is a part, and he can understand his 
place in life only as he can feel the pulse of the 
other men and women with whom he must work. 
He must see that the whole is a unity which means 
as much to him for its wholeness as his own small 
part means to him for its private interests. In 
other words, he must see that his individuality, 
sacred as it is to him, exists only as a unit in 
the whole, and it can yield nothing of satisfaction 
even to him unless it fits into the general scheme 
of things and becomes a part of the swift tide of 
life in the community. It was not merely preach- 
ing but philosophy which said, " He that findeth 
his life shall lose it." The individuality must give 
itself to the community, must seek to impress 
upon the community the best of itself — else it per- 
ishes by the worst of suicides, the refusal of the 
spirit to fulfill its function. 

These fundamental truths, essential to a right 
129 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

point of view about life, have been learned as a 
part of the experience of the past. It is the func- 
tion of education to show them to the new gen- 
erations — to give the new generations at least an 
opportunity to behold the vision and learn, from 
their own experiences, how far the vision is worth 
making into reality. 

Certain notions commonly held about fraternity 
and the social instinct, especially by men and 
women w T ho profess to be good Americans, are 
curiously inconsistent with the American spirit. 
We have spoken of the true spirit of fraternity 
as that which recognizes the common element of 
humanity in our relations with others, knows how 
to use it, and strives to work with others for the 
common welfare. It is obvious that this is hardly 
to be extended to a demand that we shall associ- 
ate with ourselves, for the mere pleasures of com- 
panionship, those in whom the situation brings 
out antagonistic traits. It is inevitable that cer- 
tain aspects of life shall be distinctly individual. 
This does not mean selfish, for among aims that 
are distinctly individual in their aspect is the 
recreation of an individual to keep him in good 
condition for usefulness to the community. A 
demand that in a man's recreation as well as in 
his work he shall sink his individual tastes and 

130 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

think only of the common elements in humanity 
is encroachment on individual liberty. The de- 
mand commonly takes the form of a complaint of 
snobbishness. We may well- concern ourselves 
with the meaning of snobbishness in America, for 
singularly we have made little effort in this coun- 
try to determine what we mean by it and what is 
the essence of it. 

It is interesting to note that snobbishness never 
appears except in personal relations. We have 
bigotry enough in the work of the world, as in 
business, in politics, in art; but in them we find 
no snobbishness. The moment men and women 
have to do personally with one another, however, 
complaint is likely to arise on one side and a 
denial on the other that snobbishness or cliquish- 
ness has crept in. It is difficult to see that either 
the side which complains or the side which denies 
is entitled to sympathy. To complain of snob- 
bishness on the part of another is to admit that 
personally one is not welcome, and it is practi- 
cally to insist that though one is not welcome 
one shall be given consideration as if one were. 
Let us examine the common grounds of welcome 
or exclusion. 

We must realize, first, that the aim of personal 
association is the pleasure of companionship. If 
10 131 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

a man has failed to win the social place that he 
desires, it is obviously because for some reason, 
usually unknown to himself, he does not please 
as a companion those who attempt to exclude him. 
This failure to please may owe its origin to any 
one of innumerable causes. It is nobody's busi- 
ness if I have a particular antipathy to people 
whose speech is nasal and harsh, to people who 
insist upon clapping me on the back by way of 
congratulation, or to people whose curiosity is 
manifest. It is equally none of my business if, 
because I am taciturn, because I part my hair in 
the middle, or because I do not regard the pre- 
vailing fashion in neckwear, some people find no 
pleasure in my company. For me to insist that 
they shall disregard these characteristics of mine 
and accept me as a companion is to thrust my 
tastes upon them in a way that would deprive 
them of liberty. 

The complaint of snobbishness more often 
arises from sensitiveness to lack of breeding or 
to lack of means than from any other circum- 
stance. No one will deny that it is very foolish 
to allow one's judgment of men to be influenced 
by either of these lacks. Let us examine the nat- 
ural result of each, however. It is obviously true 
that a person who has large means is likely to 

132 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

engage in occupations in which the expenditure 
of money will count for very little, one way or 
the other, in the choice of his course of action. 
He cannot in the nature of the case find entire 
freedom of companionship with one whose every 
move is determined more or less by the thought 
of necessary economy. In many respects perfect 
companionship between them may obtain ; but for 
many other things other companionship is bound 
to be preferable. A social barrier is present. 

A similar thing is true between men of so- 
called good birth and so-called men of the people. 
Men of the same sort of birth and breeding, at 
least so far as social relations are concerned, are 
usually accustomed to somewhat the same ways 
of doing things, see matters from somewhat the 
same point of view, and can move in their vari- 
ous relations smoothly with one another; but a 
person of different social experience is likely to 
find himself suffering from awkwardness, inde- 
cision, and even blundering which throws the so- 
cial machinery out of gear. Since the purpose of 
companionship is pleasure in the common rela- 
tions of men, to introduce into society an element 
which will not fit into the gearing that society has 
established for itself is to throw the whole ma- 
chinery out of operation. 

*33 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

This is the fact that the social leveler does not 
see. He commonly does not know when things 
are out of gear, for he is not trained to the deli- 
cate adjustments that sensitive persons have de- 
vised — or, rather, he is not sensitive to irritations 
that sensitive persons find in maladjustment. 
These irritations are many and varied. They are 
found in common violation of personal cleanli- 
ness, unnecessary reminders of the presence of 
the flesh, insistent prejudices, egotism, harsh 
judgment, and innumerable neglects of the in- 
dividuality of others. 

The exclusion from certain social circles of a 
man who irritates those in the circles does not 
imply a lack of brotherhood. It may mean sim- 
ply that for the particular purpose in hand he is 
not deemed quite so desirable as persons of an- 
other class. Those of the other class may hold 
him in far higher admiration and respect than 
they hold those whom they invite to their enter- 
tainments. They are not by his exclusion setting 
themselves up as his superiors in any way, They 
are only recognizing a principle which persists 
throughout life — that each element in an organ- 
ization should be put to the use for which it is 
most competent, and that for each purpose that 
thing should be chosen which shall serve that 

134 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

purpose best. A man who invites to his house 
some men who are of very little account except 
for social rank, excluding others who without so- 
cial rank are valuable members of the community, 
may recognize that the men whom he invites are 
good for absolutely nothing but to adorn society. 
In a way, then, the invitation may even be a rec- 
ognition of the intrinsic inferiority of those in- 
vited; but it may serve the purpose of getting 
together the right people for the purpose in hand. 
Experiments have been tried in this matter of 
refusing to recognize social classes, and almost 
invariably they have resulted in a recognition of 
the fact that, for social purposes, the lines of 
cleavage are rather sharply drawn, and that people 
of various inheritances and various environments 
are to great extent unfitted to live happily to- 
gether in the effort merely to please one another. 
Social pleasure is made up of an almost infinite 
variety of elements. It is sometimes affected by 
mere expression of face, tone of voice, grace of 
movement; it is sometimes in a ready wit which 
happens to be the complement of the wit of an- 
other; it is sometimes in a liking- for similar 
things in art, in philosophy, in life; it is some- 
times in common experiences of travel. Inevit- 
ably, where there are few common or comple- 

135 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

mentary tastes and experiences, there can be little 
purely social pleasure. To decline to undertake 
the quest for that little is not necessarily to be a 
snob. It is certainly no harm to me that a person 
who does not want me fails to invite me to join 
him. My discomfort in his presence would cer- 
tainly exceed his in mine. If, on the other hand, 
I might give him pleasure by my presence, he is 
himself the loser by any attempt on his part to 
exclude me. Why, then, is anyone hurt because 
he is excluded from relations in which the aim is 
merely the pleasure of companionship? For a 
man to demand welcome in a social group is to 
demand a privilege — and, as a matter of fact, a 
very doubtful privilege if the welcome has not 
preceded the demand. At the basis of American 
ideals is the scorn of privilege. We insist not 
only that no artificial restrictions shall be put upon 
anyone, but that no artificial considerations shall 
be claimed by him. Snobbishness implies some- 
thing false, an assumption that has no good 
ground. Before a man be accused of being a 
snob in America, the accuser must show that he 
has demurred at association with others for some 
purpose to which they were surely adapted. To 
decline social relations with a man who is so- 
cially agreeable, merely because he has risen 

136 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

" from the people " is to be a snob; to decline to 
assist a neighbor in a public enterprise, merely 
because he has never learned the secret of agree- 
able speech, is to be a snob; to decline to receive 
in your drawing-room on community business 
your former coachman, merely because he was 
once your coachman, is to be a snob. 

The spirit of fraternity demands that we shall 
accept all men at exactly their worth to society, 
and shall govern our relations with them accord- 
ing to the need of those relations. My friend of 
the political party may also be my friend of the 
club, of the golf course, and of the church; but, 
on the other hand, he is no less my friend of the 
party even if he and I have no other special com- 
mon ground. My friend of the church may be 
altogether an irritation to me everywhere else; 
but he is no less my friend when we are engaged 
in common worship. My friend of the dinner 
table may be nowhere else anything but my an- 
tagonist, but I can none the less enjoy his re- 
turn to my offering of talk. Fortunate is the man 
who finds many friends common to many paths ; 
but he is no snob who fails of this fortune. 

It will be noted that this is consistent with the 
principle of the second chapter, on the power of 
choice. Men are not really praiseworthy or 

137 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

blameworthy. They are merely to be accepted 
at their value— their value for something that the 
community desires, their value for something 
that we as members of the community find worth 
while. Every man has in him something that 
may be made of value to the community. The 
spirit of fraternity impels those who are enlight- 
ened — those who know the value of life and its 
possibilities — to try to bring men together in the 
quest of the common good. The same spirit, 
moreover, demands tact in uniting those who will 
pull together for a common result. To assume 
that all men know all their interests to be com- 
mon, and will work together in that knowledge. 
is to be blind to present facts. For different pur- 
poses different groups are essential: though, of 
course, much overlapping of groups is possible. 
We as Americans have the spirit of brotherhood. 
When we are brought to realize fully just what 
that spirit is capable of, we shall begin to see prog- 
ress in the construction of that commonwealth 
which our ancestors dreamed of. 

It should be one of the tasks of education to 
show what are the elements of common brother- 
hood, what are the traits that differentiate men, 
what are the methods of establishing and main- 
taining sympathy between various dements of 

138 



THE FRATERNAL BOND 

society, and how men have worked together in 
common cause. This is social education. These 
matters are not to be taught by rote. They are 
not to be grasped by the intellect alone. They 
must be ingrain — they must be dominant notions, 
checking automatically any tendency to make an 
idol of liberty. There must be no ground for the 
common excuse, " I didn't think," " I didn't real- 
ize/' " I forgot." The spirit of brotherhood must 
be cultivated until it is second nature. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE STILL, SMALL VOICE 

'g £\ | * E must now note the relation of the in- 
VStA* dividual to the world in the third of the 
three aspects suggested in the fifth chapter. This 
is the field of morals. 

It is an old American notion, coming in part 
from the days of the early settlers who came to 
this country for conscience's sake, that every man 
has implanted in him a monitor which draws the 
line between right and wrong. To many people, 
a suggestion that the conscience tells just what 
it has been trained to tell is practical blasphemy. 
Yet most people have had experience of the fact. 
We do with ease of mind what once we could not 
do without uncomfortable moments. This is not 
a mere blunting of sensitiveness, moreover, for 
we all find uneasiness in what we once did easily. 
Our standards are not necessarily growing lower. 
They are merely changing as our intelligence and 
experience grow. We have come to see that 
things once conceived as evil are really worth 

140 



THE STILL, SMALL VOICE 

while, and other things conceived as good are not 
worth while or are actually evil. 

The change is not so much in our judgment of 
the thing itself as in our judgment of how it is 
related to the rest of life. We see it in a larger 
aspect, in its effects on ourselves and on our fel- 
lows. Right and wrong are not the obvious 
things we like to think them. Right and wrong, 
good and evil, gain and loss, satisfaction and sac- 
rifice, are all so woven together in our complex 
lives that only a careful analysis of the situation 
and a careful judgment of its elements can strike 
a true balance. Every closer knitting of the bonds 
of brotherhood increases the complexity of the 
situation, for what is good to one may be evil to 
another, what is gain to one may be loss to an- 
other, what is satisfaction to one may be sacri- 
fice to another. With this knitting we come more 
and more to see that individual good is very often 
not clear good, for sometimes it is offset by a loss 
or a sacrifice to some other individual. We have 
already seen, in the preceding chapter, that the 
individual can realize and fulfill his individuality 
only as he makes himself a part of the community. 
The community good is his own greatest good; 
and the only absolute right for him is the good 
of the community. The still, small voice may 

141 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

mislead unless the man by his intellect and his 
imagination, guided by his sense of brotherhood, 
has grasped the real consequence of his conduct. 
Unless he has learned to see things in the large, 
in their widest relations, he is helpless, even 
aided by the still, small voice, to know the right 
and wrong. This means that the mind must be 
stored with facts about the effect of conduct on 
the individual and on the community. 

This is what is commonly called moral educa- 
tion ; but the method may well be something far 
different from that usually advocated. We noted 
some time ago that the educator has no business 
to try to bend the coming generations to his no- 
tions of what is worth while. Each generation 
has handed down evil as well as good to its suc- 
cessor, and a part of that evil has always been 
thought good. For any man or small group of 
men to take upon themselves the decision as to 
right and wrong for coming generations is too 
dangerous. They are quite as likely, judging out 
of their experience of this generation, to be wrong 
for the circumstances of another generation as to 
be right. Dogmatic statements of right and 
wrong are never safe, for no right and no wrong 
are as simple as dogmatic statements have to be. 
The task of the educator is to bring vividly be- 

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THE STILL, SMALL VOICE 

fore his pupil the facts of man's long experience 
of right and wrong. Here is no assumption of 
authority; here is no dull memorizing; here is life 
observed in its real relations, as it has been 
lived, as it is lived, as it must be lived. In this 
the pupil finds interest, and out of it he acquires 
wisdom. 

The natural vehicle for this instruction is not 
text-books in ethics, but history and literature. 
For this service literature is usually better than 
history, for when it fulfills its function it shows 
the inner aspects of human experience far better 
than historical writing usually succeeds in doing. 
The literature of an era does usually represent 
faithfully the moral questions of the time, the an- 
swers to those questions, and the effect on the 
community. History and literature together, 
where literature fails to show results as well as 
impulses, make the perfect moral guidance. 

It is worth noting, for those who look upon the 
Bible as the perfect guide to morals, that however 
good it may be in itself, unfortunately those who 
are agreed on its use for that purpose are not 
agreed as to its actual interpretation and applica- 
tion. There is almost as much disagreement on 
moral problems among believers in the literal in- 
spiration of the Bible as among men who take 

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THE AMERICAN HOPE 

the Bible as mere literature. For practical pur- 
poses, therefore, the Bible is here considered as 
merely one of the powerful literary agents for 
moral enlightenment. In it we find no complex 
pathological psychology, no neurotics, no dis- 
sected erotics, no supersensitive consciences; but 
we find ambition, jealousy, ingratitude, revenge, 
cowardice, lust, deception, theft, incest, murder — 
and loyalty, faith, forgiveness, courage, truth, 
love, purity. We find examples of virtue so high 
that the heart thrills; and we find depravity so 
frightful that the so-called yellow journals of to- 
day have not reported its like. No other book 
compares with it in disclosure of the human 
heart. 

To most persons it is heresy to declare that the 
whole truth may be told to children. The un- 
thinking simply confuse ignorance with innocence. 
Even young persons who are kept most in inno- 
cence are by merely living in the world with men 
and women forced to know that there are such 
things as vice and crime, not only imaginable 
but actual. A knowledge that certain liter- 
ary or historical characters committed certain 
named crimes, especially when evil consequences 
are shown to have followed those crimes, is 
no more harmful than the knowledge that 

144 



THE STILL, SMALL VOICE 

certain named or unnamed persons of to-day 
have committed the same crimes — without, per- 
haps, the knowledge that evil consequences fol- 
lowed. The evil that any reader can get from 
any reading depends in large measure on what he 
takes to it. The little girl of twelve who, looking 
for the evil that she had heard about, read Gen- 
esis through and found no impropriety was a 
normal child, presumably not particularly virtu- 
ous or particularly innocent. Words or ideas 
that meant nothing to her failed to catch her at- 
tention. Many persons who talk much about in- 
nocence and its preservation have little notion 
what they mean by innocence or why they wish 
it preserved. Lovers of innocence need never fear 
the truth about human nature, but only falsehood 
— or the half truth that is worse than a lie. In- 
nocence is freedom not from the knowledge of 
evil, but from the experience of evil — or the imag- 
inings of evil, which are the same thing. The 
pure in heart, like the child of twelve, escape con- 
tamination in any company; but the child who 
thinks evil will find it everywhere. From the 
mere abstract knowledge of evil, moreover, it is 
practically impossible to protect any child; for 
the street, the school, the home, the whole liter- 
ature of our tongue, are necessarily touched by 

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THE AMERICAN HOPE 

evil in just the proportion in which they are in 
touch with life. 

The problem in any case is simply how to pro- 
tect the susceptible against the contaminating in- 
fluence of evil. Many fond parents who have 
fancied their children not only innocent but ig- 
norant have waked to facts too late to prevent 
knowledge from becoming experience, whereas if 
the knowledge which they could not keep from 
their children had been made perfect, rather than 
left as mere half knowledge, the experience of evil 
could have been warded off and real innocence 
would have been preserved. Those who are not 
pure in heart may sometimes be made so by full- 
ness of knowledge. If you treat a common thing 
as secret, the young are sure to think that a 
knowledge of it is withheld from them only by 
perversity. An air of adventure surrounds it. 
Whisper about it and talk of it only on the sly, 
and they believe human nature deceitful and a 
little ashamed of itself. This is not the way to 
show the truth about moral relations. The truth 
never made vice attractive or virtue indifferent. 
For illustration, let a child know the wonders of 
sex (not only in man but in plant and animal) 
and the satisfaction and the holiness of parent- 
hood, and unless he has inherited almost bestial 

146 



THE STILL, SMALL VOICE 

lust he will have in knowledge the surest bulwark 
against temptation. Let the beautiful thing take 
possession of his mind — become a dominant no- 
tion, — and the thing that antagonizes it will have 
no opportunity to corrupt him. , 

We saw in an early chapter that all our choices, 
moral and other, are made for us by our inherit- 
ance and our experience. If we can make a child 
or a man or a woman really see life as it is, in its 
fullness, in its adjustments of one element to an- 
other, his choices are bound to be right. It is 
constantly proved true that abstract knowledge 
does not make virtuous; but when we come to 
examine the cases (in our own experience, for 
example) in which knowledge of right did not 
force to correct action, we find that the knowledge 
was not complete. It was in the back of the brain, 
so to speak, marked " to be called for " ; it was 
not at the front, insistently pointing out the neg- 
lected part of the truth. Knowledge on the shelf 
is not, for the purposes of guidance in a choice 
to be made at any particular moment, any better 
than ignorance. It simply does not at that mo- 
ment exist as knowledge. Only notions which 
are active in the brain at a moment of choice have 
any power in guiding the will. Moral progress 
consists in such cultivation of knowledge that the 
11 147 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

big truths of right and wrong, the necessary ad- 
justments between my good and your good, be- 
tween individual good and community good, shall 
be dominant notions, coming automatically into 
action when any choice involving them is at hand. 
Such only may be called complete knowledge. 
This is the protection not only against innocent 
error, but against the temptations that do so easily 
beset us. 

The failure of knowledge to reach complete- 
ness may be due to inherited weakness, inherited 
perversion, or lack of fortunate experience and 
tuition; but no educational system, whether for 
young persons or for the general community, is 
serving its whole function unless it gives oppor- 
tunity for everyone to know, as a part of his men- 
tal equipment, the moral achievement of the race. 

We have already seen that a sense of responsi- 
bility is, in spite of undermining influences, still a 
dominant American trait. We are a conscientious 
people. We are at least serious minded. We are 
at heart idealists. We do desire virtue. Such a 
people are a specially fertile field for the planting 
of what we may call dominant notions of right, 
that is, complete knowledge of the factors that 
make right and wrong. This knowledge must be 
made ingrain. Its appeal must be second nature. 

148 



THE STILL, SMALL VOICE 

It is the still, small voice. It professes not to an- 
swer questions with a dictum, however, but only 
to call vividly before one the experience of other 
men in problems of right and wrong. It tends to 
make permanent the moments of inspiration— to 
make dominant in each life the golden notions of 
the race. Each one must apply those golden no- 
tions to his own problems. 



CHAPTER IX 

LIVING OR GETTING A LIVING 

g£j HE argument of the last four chapters has 
V^J been for emphasis on the training of gen- 
eral powers and on the teaching of man's experi- 
ence in putting his powers to use. Attention was 
given there to the body, the intellect, and the 
imagination, as trained to apply themselves wisely 
to three sorts of problems — those pertaining, first, 
to things, second, to fellow man, third, to right 
and wrong. This may be called the argument for 
so-called liberal education. The purpose of such 
education is to introduce the individual to life, to 
help him to find his place in it, to help him to get 
out of it the best it can offer him, and to help 
him to give it what he can; and this purpose is 
quite as applicable to men and women as to boys 
and girls. 

The so-called practical man now comes in and 
says that all this sounds very good, but unfortu- 
nately it doesn't provide young people with means 
to support that life which the scheme is trying to 

150 



LIVING OR GETTING A LIVING 

make well worth living. It is obvious, in the first 
place, that the main object in life is not to get 
a living, but to live. The getting of a living is a 
means; the living is the end. Every community 
is disturbed by those who can " get a living " but 
do not know how to live. Indeed, it chances that 
most of the abuses that we are in these days talk- 
ing about are committed by this class of persons. 
If we could teach these people how to live, the 
rest of us could get more out of life. We Amer- 
icans, moreover, are just beginning to see that to 
get a small living and know what to do with it 
is a happier state than to get a big living and not 
know how to live. The latter is true poverty. 
Indeed, it is the commonest poverty in America 
to-day. 

In the second place, it will be shown in a later 
chapter that those who know how to live very sel- 
dom fail in ability to " get a living." The sort 
of education we have advocated is the training 
of power and the teaching of how power has been 
wisely applied. Boys and girls with that educa- 
tion have no trouble in making a living. The 
economic failures are the incompetents — those 
who know neither how to live nor how to get a 
living. For these, of course, vocational education 
is necessary. The range between the able and 

I5i 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

the incompetent, moreover, is wide, and any 
scheme must provide for all grades of power and 
inability. 

A fundamental difficulty in the extension of vo- 
cational training is the lack of wisdom as to what 
vocation a young person shall prepare for. If he 
has such good ability that the decision is of any 
great consequence to the community, he is likely 
to choose wrongly — for until his education has 
progressed rather far the gates of life have not 
been open to him, and he has not had opportunity 
to gaze upon life with anything like a correct per- 
spective. He has not yet learned what sort of life 
is for him best worth while, and much less, there- 
fore, has he learned what is for him best worth 
while as a means of getting a living. Not until 
he has had some general study of history, liter- 
ature, and science, can he begin to know his place 
in life. No one else, moreover, can choose for 
him, for no one can foresee his development until 
his powers have been tested. Until something of 
a liberal education has opened the gates of life 
for him, he has no right to tie himself down to 
training for a limited specialized field. Such spe- 
cial training will come very quickly when the gen- 
eral training has prepared the way; but when he 
is bound down to the vocation, the general train- 

152 



LIVING OR GETTING A LIVING 

ing is little likely to come within his reach, and 
he may never have the opportunity to learn how 
to live — he may know how to get a living but not 
what to do with it. The aim of life is not to get, 
but to live. It is related of many rich Americans 
that they envied their poorly paid employees the 
power of enjoyment in life. They did not know 
how to enjoy companionship, play, books, pic- 
tures, music, nature. The springs of human 
emotion were dried in them. These men would 
have been glad to begin life again and learn how 
to live rather than how to get. 

The demand for increased vocational training 
has led to insistence that it shall be furnished by 
the state at public expense. This increases the 
danger. The so-called practical man, especially 
the practical parent, will under it demand that 
pupils shall early prepare for work which shall 
bring in immediate income. A pupil's ambition 
for liberal training conflicting with the early as- 
sumption of a vocation is likely to seem extrava- 
gant; and a parent's opposition to it may lead to 
a cutting off of the possibility of a valuable career 
for many pupils. The earlier a vocation is chosen, 
the more likely it is to be a misfit. 

The possibility of waste of human powers when 
vocational choices are left to this sort of chance 

153 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

is too serious for neglect. It is well known, on 
one hand, that many men who have shown marked 
ability, and have conferred much on their com- 
munities as a result of a liberal education, would 
have been lost to the w r orld, so far as their higher 
services were concerned, if they had not been res- 
cued from too early choice of vocations held out 
to them as yielding more immediate return. 
When, on the other hand, all pupils, regardless of 
character and ability, are put through the liberal 
studies, many of them waste years at meaningless 
unprofitable drudgery. If, therefore, the early 
choice of vocational training is urged, we risk the 
loss of much valuable talent left outside the gates 
of insight into life and shut out from much of 
the value in living; if, on the other hand, we urge 
liberal studies and the postponement of vocational 
training, we risk much loss of time in carrying 
unnecessarily far the general training of common- 
place talents. In the economy of powers, it is 
usually considered wise to save the rarer thing at 
the expense of a considerable sacrifice in the com- 
monplace. This favors emphasis on liberal rather 
than vocational training, for its service is directed 
toward the finer minds. There is very great prob- 
ability, moreover, that the liberal training of com- 
monplace abilities will contribute so much to the 

154 



LIVING OR GETTING A LIVING 

value of life that it is worth while even at the 
sacrifice incurred. 

This does not mean, however, that the liberal 
training of the past has been altogether wise. 
Much of it has undoubtedly been misplaced, both 
as to the subjects taught, and as to the pupils to 
whom they have been taught. We are prone to 
think, when we find unsatisfactory results, that 
something fundamental is the matter with the 
method. Most of us, indeed, are like the quack 
doctor who is ready with the remedy before he 
has diagnosed the disease. We seldom think we 
can stop for an adequate diagnosis. The failures 
of our educational system are attributed to a fun- 
damental error in the plan ; though they are quite 
as likely to be due to a lack of judgment in the 
application of the plan. The purpose of educa- 
tion, as has been shown, is to cultivate certain 
powers and to direct them toward wise uses. 
When any method stops short in its accom- 
plishment, a good teacher will either change that 
method, or conclude that the progress of the 
pupil has gone as far in that line as his capacity 
allows. The popular demand for education in the 
past has neglected the fact that many pupils are 
of limited capacity; and many pupils have been 
kept at work on subjects which not only failed 

155 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

to stimulate them, but deadened all their suscepti- 
bilities and energies. This has been used again 
and again as an argument against liberal studies ; 
it is really only an argument against stupidity or 
lack of courage in facing the situation. The thing 
to be desired is that every pupil shall be required 
to carry his general training as far as it can go 
with results commensurate with the costs, and 
that after this point has been reached his voca- 
tional training shall begin. The purpose of the 
general, or liberal, training is to show him how 
to live. Just in the degree that his natural ability 
is great, his knowledge of how to live will make 
it easy for him to learn to get a living. Just in 
the degree that his natural ability is low, his lib- 
eral education will perforce stop early, and his 
vocational training will have not only need but 
opportunity to begin. 

A consideration touching state provision for 
vocational training is worthy of note here. By 
offering inducements, in the form of free train- 
ing, the state assumes, necessarily, additional 
responsibility. The present demand for voca- 
tional training has arisen from the large number 
of persons unable to earn what is called a decent 
living. The offer of this training is something 
of an admission by the state of its desire to pro- 

156 



LIVING OR GETTING A LIVING 

vide the means of support. If the thing is to be 
successful, therefore, it must serve the purpose of 
enabling men and women to earn a living. If 
they choose a vocation unwisely, the state provi- 
sion has failed, and either a new device must be 
found, or a living must be guaranteed under the 
vocation chosen. This comes in the end to a 
promise by the state that every man shall be se- 
cure in a decent living at the vocation which he 
himself has chosen — unless, indeed, the state is to 
choose the vocation ; and in that case equally, the 
state must guarantee the living if it is to deter- 
mine w T hat the man shall do. This is the question 
of economic freedom, to be discussed in a later 
chapter. 

Another question arises as to the right of the 
state to provide training for certain vocations and 
not for others. Can public funds be properly ex- 
pended in furnishing to some men the means of 
livelihood, leaving others to their own resources ? 
If the state attempts to debar anyone from prep- 
aration for any vocation, however ill fitted for it 
he may be, a cry will at once go up that favorit- 
ism is at work in shutting anyone from highly 
paid occupations. This, again, is the question of 
economic freedom. 

The growing demand in America for voca- 
157 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

tional training is a good sign. It indicates our 
seriousness, our faith in education, and our de- 
termination to overcome the ills that oppress us. 
Much of the energy spent in devising methods 
seems, however, in view of the considerations 
above, rather ill directed. It will no doubt be 
available for a wiser plan of liberal education 
when the pendulum has had time to swing a little 
more toward the normal. Then we shall get the 
right point of view T toward the art of living, and 
also, it is hoped, toward the necessary, but tribu- 
tary, task of getting a living. 



CHAPTER X 

THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

VV] I *E have been concerned so far with a 
\*A» study of the processes by which the in- 
dividual may be brought to the highest state of 
efficiency. We are next concerned to see how 
the community may turn the individual to its 
own uses when he and the community are not in 
accord. 

We have seen that every man is a traitor to 
himself, and to the forces that made him what he 
is, unless he seeks to impress upon his community 
the thing that seems to him best worth while. 
His only guide as to the best is the best judgment 
he can bring to bear on the subject — or the best 
judgment of those to whom his best judgment 
defers. He must live according to his own stand- 
ards or commit spiritual suicide. The commu- 
nity, on the other hand, is not obliged to accept 
his standards, nor is he obliged to accept the 
standards of others — unless, and the exception 
is vital, he by refusing to accept may interfere 

159 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

with the opportunity of other people to live ac- 
cording to their own standards. This is the spirit 
of liberty tempered with brotherhood. The com- 
munity must be bigger than any individual, and 
its right must always take precedence over his 
right. 

Next to the community right, however, the 
biggest thing in the world is individuality. No 
one knows w T hat individual brains and hearts are 
pregnant with the next big world movement. 
It is the thing which is different that institutes 
progress. The different thing is likely to be 
precious just because it is different. It must 
strive to impress its difference on its own or later 
generations. The community, on the other hand, 
must protect itself against the individual who 
is different only as he is in the rear of prog- 
ress. Yet the community frequently — indeed, 
commonly — does not recognize the man who is 
in advance. So the conflict is set up. The in- 
dividual desires to go his own way and to lead 
other men into it; the community desires usually 
to be let alone in its present way, and resents 
difference. However sincere and unselfish and 
collectivistic may be the ambition of the individ- 
ual, the community thinks it knows its own needs 
better than the individual who would serve it, 

1 60 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

and the clash continues. Our American principle 
of democracy comes in and forces the individual 
into compliance. 

In just this democracy many critics of our 
life and institutions see our gravest danger. It is 
true that democracy seems not to have done much 
for manners, for refinement, or even for morals. 
It is time to remember, however, that in the last 
fifty years we have assimilated millions of peo- 
ple whose ancestors had not our own standards 
in any of these respects and that the lump has 
been pretty big for the leaven. It is common for 
teachers to deplore the decline of standards in 
our schools and colleges. Do they realize that 
the vast majority of the students in our higher 
schools are recruited from classes that have 
known even the lower American standards for 
only one generation ? A people is not made in a 
generation; and the merely obvious attainments 
of democracy in one generation are not the cri- 
teria by which democracy should stand or fall. 

Let us review our analysis of the hope of prog- 
ress up to this point. All progress comes through 
either a new notion taking possession of the 
minds of men or a new force at work among 
men. These new notions and forces arise from 
individuals impressing themselves on the com- 

161 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

munity. The individuals become what they are 
and choose their course of conduct entirely as 
a consequence of inheritance, of experience, or 
of both inheritance and experience. This inherit- 
ance, on one hand, most students of biology agree 
is in part determined by conditions which par- 
entage governs ; and the experience, on the other 
hand, is in large part determined by conditions 
over which the community has control. A part 
of this experience lies in education, which, as we 
have seen, may not only stimulate physical, intel- 
lectual, and imaginative powers, but also produce 
a receptive attitude toward beauty, fellow man, 
and right. This education does not end at ma- 
turity, however, but may and should continue 
indefinitely. It is true, also, that among the other 
experiences that determine a man's method of 
life are the conditions with which the community 
surrounds him. 

Let us put together three of our principal 
propositions and see how they are related. Man 
must choose the good when he really compre- 
hends, through a dominant notion, that it is the 
good, and this determines not only his own 
course of action, but, in part at least, the inher- 
itance of his children; the community has the 
means to help everyone to a comprehension of 

162 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

the good, for the test of good is the accumulated 
experience of men ; the individual, in his effort to 
express his individuality, tends constantly to 
bring the community to a reexamination of its 
standards and to teach it by his experiences when 
those standards need amendment. Here, then, is 
a possible cycle of progress. 

The question to be determined is just how 
the community may most wisely exercise its 
power as an agent in progress. Shall it trust it- 
self consciously to guide its own destinies, or 
shall it sit idly and curiously by while the slow 
course of Nature unassisted yields the product. 

If the community is consciously to take a hand 
in its own progress, democracy is the inevitable 
agent. We in America will not listen to talk of 
an oligarchy, a patriarchy, an aristocracy— even 
an aristocracy of brains or culture. We trust 
ourselves in the large; rather, we trust liberty 
and fraternity manifesting themselves through 
democracy more than we trust brains or culture. 
What are the prospects of progress under democ- 
racy? It is true that democracy tends in one re- 
spect to crush the individual, for it often applies 
to him unenlightened standards that may be far 
beneath his own. It tends, on the other hand, to 
stimulate the individual, for it assures him that 
12 163 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

he has as good a chance as any other man to 
impress upon the community his own conception 
of what is worth while. The community's judg- 
ment is likely to be wrong, for its standard is 
always an average standard; but the safety of it 
lies in the fact that the American community is 
always ready to be convinced. Few deep-rooted 
prejudices block the way. Couple with this con- 
dition the fact that all men must choose the good 
when they comprehend it, and we have in our 
democracy a safeguard of progress rather than a 
barrier. We are little likely to be carried away 
for long by a wave of error; we are little likely 
to be shut out long from a good thing by mere 
inertia. Grant that anyone desires the truth to 
prevail, grant that any individual is ahead of his 
time, grant that any power is working for good, 
and we find the conditions of progress in just 
this America here and now. 

Let us see some of the practical methods open 
to us. We start with the fact that a man must 
choose the good when he comprehends it, as was 
shown in the second chapter. In general, the 
community has the power to make things at- 
tractive or unattractive to individuals; for it can 
always attach rewards or penalties to a line of 
conduct. The penalties are not intended to make 

164 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

men virtuous : they are intended simply to express 
public judgment about certain things. Men are 
influenced by what their fellows think. If the 
community really believes an act heinous, many 
men without opinions of their own are likely to 
accept that opinion ready-made. This acceptance 
does not make virtue; but it protects the com- 
munity, it creates a sentiment, and in time that 
sentiment crystallizes into a permanent point of 
view which is taken as a beneficent matter of 
course. It is a well-known fact that in recent 
years many men who violated many common 
principles of business probity, and did so out of 
mere blindness, have come, as a consequence of 
legal restrictions expressing public sentiment, to 
see clearly the evil in what they did; and to-day 
they would be among the most vigorous in op- 
position to a repeal of the laws. They have been 
educated to see the truth, and to-day, for them, 
neither law nor penalty is necessary. This is 
progress. It confirms our proposition that men 
perforce choose the good when they compre- 
hend it. 

One penalty that lies in the disposition of all 
of us is that of disapproval. As a people we are 
too good-natured. We have not learned that we 
are responsible for our neighbor's errors if we 

165 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

fail to help him see the truth. Since sin is only 
unwisdom, we are not good Samaritans, but only 
publicans, if we leave our neighbor in his distress. 
We need not intrude upon him, but we should at 
least help him to see the truth when he has placed 
himself within our ken. We have no business to 
judge the man, for we do not know the steps 
by which he reached his state ; but we should ex- 
press our judgment of the act if it is a matter of 
public concern. 

The man who cares nothing for the manifest 
opinion of his fellows went long ago to the wil- 
derness as a hermit. Every other man not only 
cares what people think of him but is governed 
largely in his action by the treatment men give 
him, by his wife's hope of social success, by his 
daughter's chances for a happy marriage, by his 
son's desired standing in college. He will not 
jeopard these if he can see their relation to his 
own conduct. If we were not criminally good- 
natured in condoning iniquity, we should find 
less satisfaction in the social entertainment paid 
for out of the wrecking of a bank, in our daugh- 
ter's visits to the girl whose father put poison in 
the food of the people, in the scholarship or the 
athletic prowess of the boy who is supported in 
luxury out of the sale of worthless corporation 

166 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

stock. We are too good-natured to protest ex- 
cept in vague generalities that fit no one exactly. 
We stupidly think the sinner knows his iniquity; 
and he stupidly thinks we know ours. If we 
could make him see his sin as we* see it, he would 
sin no more ; and if he could make us see our sin 
as he sees it, we should sin no more. Frank ex- 
pression of personal disapproval, or exchange of 
personal moral judgments, is all that we need to 
purge away half our evils. It is not a spirit of 
brotherhood that keeps us silent; it is the good 
nature of sheer laziness or indifference to moral 
responsibility. 

This method of public disapproval is too weak 
to correct all our evils, for the offenders are often 
beyond the social reach of those who have the 
intelligence to comprehend the offense. Here di- 
rect legal penalty is the most effective means for 
opening the eyes of the unenlightened. The com- 
munity must commit itself clearly and definitely 
to condemnation. Most offenders against pub- 
lic order and public welfare are dominated by 
some desire which cannot be satisfied without 
harm to the community. Such domination is not 
met by newspaper articles, pulpit denunciations, 
and academic discussions. A person who suffers 
from an obsession is proof against these, and 

167 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

does not even give them thought. He must be 
reached by something that gives him a distinct 
shock, a rude awakening to the possibility of 
other points of view. Then reason and imagina- 
tion and the other elements of good judgment 
may come into play. A threatened period of im- 
prisonment will usually penetrate the armor of 
any obsession. The sense of right will always 
prevail when it is given an opportunity; but it 
must first fall on ground from which prejudice 
has been removed. 

The best way to combat dominant notions that 
are evil is to provide dominant notions that are 
wholesome. One of the wonders of physiology is 
reflex action, by which a sensation acts directly 
upon a muscle and produces the desirable effect 
before the brain has had time to act. This is 
well illustrated by slipping on ice. When the foot 
goes astray the sensation is communicated to the 
brain; but if nothing were done until the sensa- 
tion had reached the brain, and the brain had 
thought out a course of action, and the desired 
action had been communicated to the muscle, the 
man would be down before the muscle had begun 
to move. What happens is a short cut from 
sensor nerve to motor nerve, and the muscle acts 
before the brain has received the message. The 

168 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

child just learning to walk cannot easily keep its 
balance, for the proper response of muscle to 
sensation has not yet been established by frequent 
experience. Practice, however, makes the bal- 
ance automatic. Training is at the bottom of the 
performance. The same sort of thing is possible 
in mental processes. The mind is not fully 
trained if it cannot direct wisely on common mat- 
ters until it has stopped to think out the various 
arguments for one course or the other. The 
mental processes must be matters of habit. The 
response to the common elements of the situation 
must be immediate, more or less automatic. A 
true dominant notion must make difficult the en- 
trance of a false dominant notion. 

Let us, take a few concrete instances. No man 
of sense in an inhabited community shuts his eyes 
and then after a pause fires a loaded revolver. A 
part of his mental equipment is a realization that 
he is seriously derelict if he sends a bullet at ran- 
dom. He knows that the community will hold 
him responsible if the bullet does harm. He can- 
not plead in excuse that he did not know anyone 
was to be in the line of the bullet. Yet drivers 
of motor cars are constantly doing an equivalent 
thing. They are constantly driving an engine of 
destruction, far worse than a bullet, at such a 

169 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

pace that they do not know what will be at many 
points in the path by the time they arrive. The 
only safety is to see that always it can be stopped 
in a distance so short and so clear that no ob- 
stacle can be reasonably conceived to be in any 
part of the path before the car reaches that part. 
If a car is going around a curve, the control 
should be such that it can be stopped before the 
unseen portion of the road is reached. At a 
crossing, the control should be such, and the dis- 
tance from other vehicles should be such, that 
the car can be stopped before collision is reason- 
ably conceivable. It is common for drivers to 
assume that another vehicle or a pedestrian is 
going to continue on the present course. Yet one 
has a right to change one's mind or conclude to 
stop or turn. To shoot a bullet at a point where 
a man happened a moment ago to be walking, on 
the ground that it is safe to assume that he will 
have passed on before the bullet arrives, is an act 
that no one would think of committing. Yet 
motor cars are constantly sent past other vehicles 
and pedestrians on exactly that principle. Many 
fatal accidents, fatal both to motorists and to 
others, are due simply to the failure to see that 
sending a car at a rate that will take it beyond 
the sure clear point of control is even more 

170 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

heinous than with closed eyes to shoot a bullet. 
The community has protected itself against the 
blind firing of weapons, for it has created an au- 
tomatic reaction in the minds of the people so 
that the temptation to fire is always met by the 
thought of consequences. It can do the same 
for reckless driving of motor cars. The com- 
munity must lay aside some of its indifferent 
good nature, and must declare itself unmistak- 
ably. It must open the eyes of the blind to the 
real meaning of what they are doing. It must 
help them to see the truth. It must penetrate 
the obsession of speed and substitute a realiza- 
tion that a pedestrian stepping suddenly from the 
roadside, a carriage rolling in leisurely fashion 
around a curve, a nervous horse startled by any 
sudden apparition, are common things, are legit- 
imate things, are desirable things, and that their 
very existence is threatened by any speed that 
will carry a motor car beyond the point of neces- 
sarily clear path. This realization must operate 
automatically in the presence of temptation. A 
penalty that operates heavily enough to give a 
mental shock will make it automatic. Fines and 
traps and paroles are a mere jest. A man who 
takes chances, even probable chances that other 
people are going to do this or that in driving or 

171 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

walking, must be shown that he is too dangerous 
to be at liberty. A threatened term of imprison- 
ment will show him that there are things bigger 
than his momentary pleasure or business. When 
he has once really grasped the truth, the commu- 
nity is safeguarded ; but he must see it as a dom- 
inant notion — so dominant that it is too persist- 
ent for any temporary obsession to supplant. 

A crying evil in these days is the lawlessness 
of the young. It ranges from ruffianism in pub- 
lic to vice in secret-fraternity halls. The remedy 
is in the hands of the public. Until legal major- 
ity the child is in the charge of the parent. If 
the parent is capable of taking proper care of the 
child, but will not voluntarily do so, he must be 
compelled. If he is incompetent, the state must 
step in. Many parents both competent and will- 
ing are blind to their duty. Every man of sense 
knows that boys and girls of high-school age are 
not competent to conduct their affairs unaided. 
Yet parents defend high-school fraternities. The 
essence of the secret society is that it shall be self- 
contained; and a parent who allows his child to 
take the oath of such a society, however good the 
society and its membership may appear out- 
wardly, is derelict in his fundamental duty — the 
duty to keep informed of that child's develop- 

172 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

ment and supervise his conduct. The oath un- 
dermines the whole social fabric based on the 
family relation. The problem of such secret so- 
cieties is not fundamentally for the school: it 
merely by chance happens to be identified with 
school life. It is a problem for the community. 
The community must show parents that they may 
not properly allow their children to cut loose 
from home bonds and establish dominant notions 
of loyalty to outside irresponsible agents. In a 
sense, the high-school fraternity does not offer a 
problem at all, for it obviously violates the fun- 
damental social principles and must be eradicated. 
The problem is simply one of tact in the method 
of eradication. The attack should be not against 
the irresponsible pupils, but against the irrespon- 
sible parents who have allowed their duty to go 
by default. Parents must be given a dominant 
notion of their responsibility for their children's 
offenses, whether the offenses be violations of the 
right of others or degradation of the children 
themselves by vice. There must be no escape 
from the recognition of the fact that they who 
propagated the child must make him fit for life 
in a community with others. It would seem 
queer to sentence a derelict parent to keep his 
child for thirty days always in sight; but if this 

173 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

were the parental penalty for a child's first public 
offense, such offenses would rapidly decline. We 
can devise penalties that will give dominant no- 
tions of parental responsibility if we will. The 
time seems to be approaching when we must. 

Another evil against which we are battling is 
the risk to human life from improper food and 
drugs. The remedy is obvious if we really mean 
business. " A life for a life " is old doctrine, and 
somewhat out of fashion; but it may be worth 
reviving. 

It is time, indeed, to consider what is, after 
all, the function of any penal code. It is not the 
function of the community to visit punishment, 
for vengeance is God's. Indeed, we have seen 
that no man can at any time choose otherwise 
than he does at that time Men are not blame- 
worthy, but benighted. The function of the com- 
munity, then, is enlightenment, is the creation of 
dominant notions of truth. No means is too 
severe, and no individual right can interpose be- 
tween the purpose and the means, for accom- 
plishing this end. If a man endangers the life 
of others, he must know that he far more endan- 
gers his own ; the community, in order to enforce 
that notion, must see to it that the man who 
endangers the life of others shall lose his own. 

i/4 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

This is hard doctrine, but the remedy for no dis- 
ease is likely to be agreeable. The value of life 
must be made a dominant notion, even if in mak- 
ing it so we have to sacrifice a few obsessed in- 
dividuals who hold it cheap. In the practical 
conduct of many persons human life actually is 
cheap. Witness the self-destruction by suicide 
and by vice ; the slaughter by criminal operations 
on pregnant women; the sacrifices by war over 
trivial material values; the consumption of life 
by dangerous industrial processes; and, on the 
other hand, the swinelike breeding of unwelcome 
children by unthinking sensualists. A few of 
those who hold life cheap may well be spared 
in the effort to make it dearer. The threat of the 
death penalty may not affect as a deterrent the 
hardened criminal accustomed to brutish passions, 
but it would give marvelous dominance to cer- 
tain desirable notions in the minds of most deal- 
ers in unfit food, of reckless drivers of motor 
cars, of irresponsible railroad officials, and of all 
others amenable to humanizing influences. 

Since, finally, penalties are intended not for 
punishment, but for education, they should be 
applied both when the result is evil, even though 
accidental, and when the intention was evil, even 
though the result was nothing. What we need is 

175 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

that men shall have a new sense of responsibility : 
that they shall have dominant notions that are 
on the watch for danger, that foresee mischance, 
that forefend harm. Innocence of evil intent does 
not protect the community against the wandering 
smallpox patient, nor against the hunter who 
shoots first and looks afterwards to see whether 
the moving figure was his friend. Neither does 
the happy chance of good air and good exercise 
protect the community against the milk dealer 
whose cans are washed and dried in the barn. 
Life is full of hazards for all of us ; but the time 
must come when the man who takes the hazard 
shall be the one to bear the burden : nowadays 
we pass the burden on unless we can prove both 
distinct evil intent and distinct evil result. 

The same sort of thing is true with every im- 
position which the community to-day suffers. 
Democracy assures a remedy as soon as the com- 
munity is convinced, for the community can 
always express its judgment in a form that will 
penetrate any obsession. 

This method of creating dominant notions is 
serviceable, moreover, for positive progress as 
well as for restraint. If we create in the com- 
munity, as we are able to do by proper education, 
a sentiment for the best things of life, we can 

176 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

raise its whole tone. When men's experience of 
lust is understood, a passion for purity becomes 
dominant; and then illegitimacy and prostitution 
must decline. When the consequences of greed 
are really understood, business cupidity is largely 
supplanted. The main enlightenment that any 
man can have is a sense of responsibility — re- 
sponsibility to learn the best, to cling to it until 
the choice of it is a part of his automatic mental 
processes, and to help others to see it. When 
enlightenment comes to a man, he knows that he 
is responsible for his actions, even in the effects 
that are remote. He knows that he cannot dis- 
claim responsibility for fraud in his corporation 
merely because he has hired others to run it; 
for if he has conferred powers on them, it is 
his responsibility to see that they do not abuse 
those powers. If he is a director, he knows that 
he must direct. If he cannot perform the duties 
of an office, he realizes that he must not take it. 
If any man is unable to see the responsibility of 
great power, he is too dangerous a man to trust 
with power. It is the function of the community 
not only to protect itself but to make him see the 
truth. 

One cause of the decline of responsibility, be- 
sides the unfortunate educational theories already 

177 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

mentioned, has been the growth of corporations. 
The essence of a corporation is lack of responsi- 
bility. Legally a corporation can do no harm, 
and the responsibility of stockholders is usually 
limited to the risk of losing what they have con- 
tributed to its funds. Corporations are managed 
by men who are merely agents. Such agents are 
released in the common interpretation of the situ- 
ation from all requirements of anything more 
than obeying the technical law and earning maxi- 
mum dividends for their employers. We have 
had established in our midst, therefore, a very 
large body of very able men who have been set 
apart from the rest of the community to the ex- 
tent that no human quality is to enter into their 
transactions except the quality of intelligence. 
With the growth of business of corporations it is 
commonly true that the officers in control have 
been unable to keep run of the details of the work 
under them. It is impossible for the directors of 
a large bank to know more than a few of the loans 
made by that bank, for the directors of a large 
railroad to know more than the fundamental 
transactions of its operation, for the directors of 
a large industrial corporation to know the real 
methods by which it is building up trade or de- 
stroying competitors. This is especially true 

i 7 8 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

when, as we find the case nowadays, many men 
are directors in several corporations. The direct- 
ors judge the men below them by their ability to 
earn money. The stockholders judge the direct- 
ors by their ability to direct the earning of money. 
From the corporation point of view, it is no- 
body's business from the humblest in the ranks to 
the president of the corporation to know whether 
the dealings of the corporation are based on jus- 
tice, public spirit, or anything but dividends ; and 
this care for dividends must necessarily pervade 
the whole establishment. No man dares, if he 
regards his standing with his employers, to think 
of anything which has any larger aspect than 
income. The inevitable result upon the commu- 
nity is that, since probably more than half the 
financial transactions of any community are under 
corporate control, the sense of fraternity is dulled. 
It is not a conscious blunting of the better self 
on the part of any of these men. It is simply an 
inevitable result of the standards put before them 
in the business life of perhaps eight or ten hours 
of the day; and these standards result in some- 
thing of a dulling of the edge of their sympathies 
and breadth of view in their remaining hours. 

No one can question the vast increase in pro- 
duction arising from the growth of corporations. 
13 179 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

No one can deny the improvements in the means 
of human enjoyment which the organization of 
industry on a very large scale has put within 
the reach of every man. Nowadays families 
which have been separated can be reunited on 
holidays and other occasions from distances over 
which it was impossible to travel before the 
days of consolidation of railroads. The growth 
of corporations has reduced the arduousness of 
much labor, for it has made possible the use of 
labor-saving machinery which small capitals could 
not have compassed. Yet it is doubtful whether 
these conveniences have actually increased human 
happiness. The real sacrifice of labor does not 
consist so much in the arduousness of the task as 
it does in the reaction upon the mind and body 
and spirit of the laborer. Twelve hours of hard 
labor under good conditions may be far less a 
drain of individual force than five hours under 
the conditions of many modern factories. The 
improved transportation facilities have probably 
resulted less in a reunion of families previously 
separated than in a wider scattering of families 
to be reunited, so that the ultimate result in this 
respect is nothing. To put this in an extremely 
bald form, it is possible to believe that all the good 
ever produced by the development of corpora- 

180 



THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY 

tions, through the increase of physical comfort, 
luxury, and convenience, is far more than offset 
by the evil which lies in dulling the sense of re- 
sponsibility and sympathy. Few will listen to a 
demand for the abolition of corporations ; but all 
of us are demanding that a greater sense of re- 
sponsibility be created in those who manage 
affairs that affect the community as a whole. 

To summarize this chapter, then, we may say 
that we can, if we wish, make men take to heart 
their responsibility, not only for evils produced, 
but for good neglected. This can be done in 
large measure by the force of outspoken condem- 
nation ; but where that fails to awaken the moral 
consciousness of the offender, the stamp of dis- 
approval can be made impressive and effective 
by a penalty that shall shock the mind of the of- 
fender into a new grasp of the big truths. 



CHAPTER XI 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 



VVj 1 9 E have been considering some of the 
VSlA* methods by which the community may 

secure the sort of progress that it wants. It is 
obvious that these methods are applicable for the 
relief of many of our economic ills. Yet just 
in proportion as means are powerful, care should 
be used in applying them to situations that are 
not thoroughly understood. There is ground for 
fear that many in our American communities are 
misled in explaining our economic ills, and be- 
lieve to be evil those things which are really the 
roots of our greatest economic good. These peo- 
ple are likely to desire to make dominant many 
erroneous notions, for they wish to eradicate what 
ought to be nourished. It behooves us, therefore, 
to examine briefly some elements in the economic 
situation and see whether they conform to our 
fundamental American ideals. 

The main complaints against our industrial 
182 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

system are based on the fact that three mischances 
are possible under it : the willing worker cannot 
always get land to work on ; he cannot always 
get capital to work with; he cannot always, even 
when employed, get a decent wage. Many minor 
evils have led to innumerable minor complaints, 
but these are admitted by all to be mere excres- 
cences and not inherent in the system itself. The 
chief evils, moreover, are not usually designated 
quite as they are designated above. We are not 
usually told that a man cannot get land or capital, 
but that he cannot get work. The latter is a 
more effective way of putting it, for it appeals 
directly to the emotions; the other requires a 
certain putting-together of unfamiliar ideas be- 
fore the meaning of the situation is quite clear. 
It happens, however, that the emotional way of 
putting the thing often suggests something that 
is not quite true. If we are to consider the situ- 
ation carefully, therefore, we must take it exactly 
as it is. What does it really mean to say that 
a man cannot get work? 

Many years ago the discovery was made that 
the only physical work man ever does is to move 
things. The most complicated operations are suc- 
cessions of movings of things. The cook moves 
the kindlings to the fuel and the shavings to the 

183 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

kindlings. She moves the match against a rough 
surface and friction sets at work chemical forces 
which produce flame. She moves the flame to 
the shavings. She moves the kettle to the water 
tap, and she moves the faucet to allow gravity 
to carry the water to the kettle. She moves the 
flour to the sifter, and moves the sifter to a point 
from which gravity will carry the flour to the 
pan. She moves salt and sugar and other things 
so that gravity shall add them to the flour; she 
moves a spoon about until the ingredients are 
mixed; she moves the mixture to the fire; the 
heat and other chemical forces bake the cake. All 
man does is to place things so that nature will do 
for him exactly the work that he wants done. Be- 
sides this, man's power is confined to the brain 
work of planning and the social work of dealing 
with other men. 

The simplest productive labor, then, requires 
three things : first, the products of nature to work 
on; second, the mental power to know how the 
work should be done; third, the manual labor of 
placing those products so that natural forces shall 
work on them as desired. The simplest labor 
may well be illustrated by the picking of berries. 
Nature made the berries, the mind of man plans 
how they may be gathered most expeditiously and 

184 






ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

in the best condition, and the labor of man moves 
them according to the plan. 

The moment we go farther in the scale of la- 
bor, however, we get a new element. As I am 
writing, a telephone message tells me that a 
crowd of children has been picking berries in a 
pasture which with much labor I have prepared 
for a blueberry crop. My planning and my labor 
have gone into that pasture, and the result is an 
increase of product. We have five elements : the 
natural product, the planning and the labor of 
increasing the product, the planning and the labor 
of picking. Here, then, is something more than 
natural product, present planning, and present 
labor. We have introduced the element of past 
planning and past labor. They entered into the 
product, and contributed to its amount. In this 
case, however, since the children carried off all 
they picked and stripped the pasture, that past 
planning and labor got no compensation. The 
present labor carried off not only its own product 
but that of past labor, or so much of it, at least, 
as is represented by this year's crop. Not only 
has the past labor so far received no compensa- 
tion, but if strangers get the berries in subsequent 
years by a similar contrivance it never will get 
compensation. 

185 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

It happens that the present increased produc- 
tiveness of the land due to this past labor is sim- 
ply capital, and that all capital is of similar origin 
— the product of past labor not consumed but 
devoted to further production. It may chance 
now not to be held by the original producer, but 
produced it was and consumed it was not; and 
the laborer who produced it is entitled to benefit 
from its production as clearly as is the laborer 
who produces things to-day. He may, moreover, 
transfer to another his right in that capital — or 
else there is no liberty. If the laborer wishes to 
lend that capital, he may get compensation in 
the form of interest ; this, however, does not com- 
pensate him for the original labor, but only for 
allowing another to make temporary use of it. 
His original capital, stored labor product, is still 
unimpaired, and he may consume it at his pleas- 
ure; or he may sell outright his stored labor 
product of the past. 

Either of these things anyone would say that 
I might do in the blueberry patch. I might each 
year demand for every bushel picked a certain 
number of quarts as my share of the picking — 
for my labor has made picking easier — or I might 
sell outright to another my claim to such royalty. 
In the first case I should be getting interest on 

1 86 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

my investment of labor, that is, compensation 
from another for allowing him to use the results 
of my labor ; in the second case, I should be get- 
ting direct compensation for my labor. If I had 
been so eager for half-ripe berries that I had gone 
to the pasture before the children and had gath- 
ered the crop, I should have reaped directly this 
year's return for my past labor. 

For the present, to simplify our argument, we 
may combine the planning and the manual labor, 
and call them both labor ; and we may consider all 
natural products as land, for all such products are 
realizable only in connection with land. Our es- 
sentials for production, then, as we have seen, 
are nominally land and labor; but in actual life, 
that is, as soon as we get even the simplest tool 
such as a pail for gathering berries, we require 
the use of something produced by the labor of 
the past; and so in any life above that of the 
primitive savage, capital is as much a requisite 
a? land and labor. 

As a matter of fact, few men of the wage- 
earning class except those who have a love for 
agriculture care for land as an agent of produc- 
tion. They wish to work in shops, stores, fac- 
tories; but their work is largely on the product 
of land — lumber, metal, food-stuffs, textile ma- 

i8 7 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

terials. They cannot work at their chosen trades 
without such products. Not producing these 
products on their own land, they must procure 
from others. The labor which others spent on 
these products must be compensated. It happens, 
moreover, that most wage earners do not, for 
one reason or another, wish to buy the products 
upon which they are to work. They prefer to 
supply the labor and let others supply the materi- 
als. For the labor on these materials, however, 
as we have just seen, compensation must be 
given. This the capitalist provides. So it is 
true that though the laborer says that it is work 
that he wants, he really means that he wants 
placed at his disposal some products of land and 
past labor — that is, practically land and capital. 
Our task, then, is to learn how far private con- 
trol of land and of capital interferes with the 
laborer's " right to work." 

Let us examine first the meaning of private 
ownership of land. The easiest way is to see first 
what happens in a community small enough to be 
seen at a glance. Let us suppose the families of 
two brothers to be settled on an island. The 
families are of the same size and are similar in 
character. The island is divided equally between 
them. In the second generation one of these 

1 88 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

families is small because the members believe 
in providing better care for each individual than 
will be possible if the numbers are large; the 
other family has increased rapidly. This dis- 
parity in the growth of the two families contin- 
ues for a century. At the end of that time on 
one half of the island the population is several 
times as large as that on the other; and on the 
first half the demand for food and other natural 
products, or the raw material out of which to 
manufacture goods, is so great that all the best 
land has been long in use and much of the poor- 
est is now required for cultivation. On the sec- 
ond half of the island, since the numbers are 
very much smaller, the pressure has not carried 
cultivation so far down upon the poor soils. The 
poorest land in use on this second half of the is- 
land is as good as the average in use on the first 
half. In another century, if the increase of num- 
bers continues in the same proportion, those on 
one half of the island are obliged to cultivate land 
extremely infertile, while those on the other are 
still well supplied with land of fair productivity. 
It is inevitable at this point, if not long before, 
that the crowded population will wish if not even 
demand a redistribution of all the land of the 
island. It is equally inevitable that the smaller 

189 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

population will deny the justice of such a de- 
mand. Both families from the beginning have 
had power to choose between a small population 
w T ith ample land, and a crowded population with 
crowded land. Each made its choice, and now 
the one which has indulged its own tendency to 
increase demands the fruits of the self-restraint 
of the other. It may be true, of course, that in 
many cases the restriction of population is not a 
virtue but a vice. We are assuming, however, 
a normal or rational situation in conformity with 
the notion of progress indicated in the chapter 
on the marriage tie. It is certainly policy for the 
community to encourage the rational situation, 
and we are concerned to test things on that basis. 
It is hard to see why, under our supposition, the 
more prosperous community should surrender to 
the other the source of its prosperity — namely, the 
superior ratio of its good land to its population. 
This ratio has been the result of a conscious de- 
termined plan carried out by a restraint which 
the other community never attempted to practice. 
For the large community to demand its surrender 
is to demand what the other has earned. 

It is obvious that if there were any real fear 
lest the large community should be able to en- 
force its demand for a redistribution of land, the 

190 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

small community would hesitate to incur the costs 
of making improvements on its half of the island ; 
but if such fear had no ground, such a prosper- 
ous community would be likely to make many 
improvements which would be more profitable 
than forcing cultivation down upon inferior soils. 
This is simple human nature. No one — except 
in charity — will systematically or permanently 
make improvements on any soil unless he is as- 
sured that he will reap a reasonable benefit from 
them; and yet progress would long ago have 
ceased if land improvement had not gone on with- 
out cessation. Few things can be of more im- 
portance to a community than stimuli to a more 
effective use of its natural resources. 

We have seen that the small community is jus- 
tified in refusing to divide its land with the large 
community. If, moreover, outsiders were now to 
come to the island and demand that it be reap- 
portioned and that they should share in the ap- 
portionment, the resentment of the more pros- 
perous community would be justifiably increased. 
The old inhabitants could hardly be expected to 
open their lands, honestly acquired, to possession 
or common ownership by whoever chanced to 
come to the island. 

Yet all this is just what has happened and is 
191 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

happening in America. Let us follow it through 
some of its phases. It may not be possible to 
set up a claim that the original holders of land 
in America were more worthy than the later 
claimants; but it is true that the original hold- 
ers secured their titles usually by legitimate meth- 
ods, and that the security of the community 
requires that the stimulus to further improvement 
be not impaired by any denial of the right of 
transfer of titles. Let us examine very briefly 
the historical origin of land titles and land trans- 
fers in America. Most of the land of this coun- 
try was practically given to the first settlers. 
Some of it, indeed, was given to royal favorites, 
or sold to trading companies or individuals, but 
even in these cases the early settlers obtained it 
at prices that are insignificant. Even to-day land 
is given away by the government to actual set- 
tlers. Many railroad corporations have held vast 
tracts of land granted to them as aids in building 
through and developing unsettled country: such 
grants may not have been wise; but they were 
not necessarily iniquitous, and they were believed 
necessary to induce anyone to build railroads. 
That land has been sold at low prices. There 
was a time, then, when any one of us or our an- 
cestors might have taken possession of land in 

192 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

fee simple, either without cost or at a very low 
rate. The right to buy and to sell, moreover, has 
been practically unrestricted. Many men now 
holding land inherited it from ancestors who were 
original holders, and many others have bought 
land out of their savings from labor or their 
profits of business. The system of land owner- 
ship and transfer has been at least natural and 
unhampered. Frauds have no doubt been per- 
petrated in many cases, but such are inherent in 
any system and do not arraign the principle of 
private property. The spirit of the laws has been 
impartiality, equality, and justice ; and the method 
has been to uphold, as all justice must uphold, 
first, the right of priority, and, second, the right 
of transfer. There have been practically no other 
restrictions on ownership of land in America. 

Let us return for a moment to the illustration 
of the two supposititious families on the island. 
If any business relations are maintained between 
them, one circumstance may establish for the 
poorer community a claim against the other. 
The richer community may, if it likes, let to the 
other some of the land not needed for its own 
purposes. Those who are tempted to hire will 
find it profitable to engage land from the mem- 
bers of the richer community even if they are 

193 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

obliged to pay for that land almost all that it 
produces above the poorest lands cultivated in 
their own territory; that is to say, if very poor 
land is worth cultivating at home, no loss is suf- 
fered (beyond the expense of transportation) if 
one cultivates better land away from home and 
pays exactly the excess product to the owner as 
rent. No gain, on the other hand, is made when 
land is so hired. The moment such land can be 
hired for less than the value of its extra produc- 
tivity, however, it is worth hiring. In other 
words, the community with a small population 
is able to support itself in comfort on its better 
lands, whereas the community which has in- 
dulged its animal instinct for increase is forced 
down on soils so poor that a struggle with pov- 
erty has begun; and the poorer community finds 
profit in paying rent to the richer for any lands 
better than its own poorest. This is a common 
economic situation; indeed, in essence it is the 
situation wherever the right of private property 
in land is maintained. Here arises the obvious 
objection to our land system. 

Why should the richer community make a 
profit out of the necessities of the poorer? Is 
this the application of our American ideal of 
brotherhood? If the richer community can get 

194 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

ample support from its better lands, why should 
it force its neighbor to pay for the use of land 
which can be spared? This is the question 
asked by those who advocate the " single tax." 
It can have only one reasonable answer, and no 
reasonable man has ever given any other answer. 
The richer community has no right to a profit 
made out of the necessities of its poorer neigh- 
bor, even though those necessities have been 
brought on by the improvidence of that neighbor. 
The advocates of the single tax seem generally to 
think that this answer is all that is needed to 
establish the justice of their desired reform. It 
is really, however, only the beginning of a new 
problem. It is true that as a fundamental prin- 
ciple of ethics no man should out of his abun- 
dance make a profit from the necessities of others ; 
but it is not necessarily true that private prop- 
erty in land should therefore be abolished, or 
that taxation should render private ownership 
too expensive. 

The increase in the demand for land, and 
therefore the growth of rent, is due to the pres- 
sure of population crowding occupation of land 
to inferior soils and inferior locations. As we 
saw in our illustration of the two families on an 
island, one was prosperous because it escaped 
14 i 95 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

pressure, and the other was pinched. This should 
mean more than mere financial difference, more- 
over. It should mean, and usually does mean, 
for the more prosperous community some degree 
of leisure for the brighter things of life, some 
enjoyment of the beauty of nature where the land 
is not strained to support a teeming population, 
some opportunity for cultivation of the human 
mind and soul. If there had never been private 
control of land in the case of the island families, 
the big family would have swamped the small 
one — would have forced all alike to the lowest 
standard that could be maintained on the over- 
crowded soil. The big family would have robbed 
the small family of its power to live in fair abun- 
dance, in reasonable leisure, in refinement — on 
the products of its own industry and foresight — 
and undegraded by its animal instincts. In other 
words, private control of land is essential to pro- 
tect one part of a community from the degra- 
dation of its standards through the tendency of 
another part to grow beyond its power to sup- 
port itself in dignity. The part of the community 
which prefers quality to quantity in its population 
cannot attempt to control that part which prefers 
quantity to quality (except so far as encroach- 
ment on rights occurs) ; but neither can that part 

196 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

which breeds like swine claim a distribution or 
nationalization of land against those who regard 
a low ratio of population to acres as a requisite 
for progress. With fundamental differences 
of notion as to how life should be lived, com- 
munity of interest in the prime necessity of 
life would be intolerable. The possibility of 
private control is the only safeguard of anyone's 
right. 

As we have seen, there was a time when any- 
one in America could secure land for a song. It 
was good fortune for those who got it, or for 
their descendants ; and it was not their fault that 
others then in Germany, Ireland, Italy, or Russia, 
failed of the opportunity. No more is it to-day 
the fault of those who hold land that the teeming 
millions of Europe and Asia have had no oppor- 
tunity to share in the land of America. Every 
man living has had ancestors for countless gen- 
erations : and every man's ancestors, at some 
point in his family tree, had as good an oppor- 
tunity as any other's to acquire land. If those 
ancestors failed of opportunity to get land in 
America, either through unwisdom or because of 
untoward circumstances, the land owners of 
America may be sorry for the descendants; but 
that fact does not make American land extensive 

197 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

enough for the prosperity of all who would come 
and share in it if they could. What claim to land 
in America, except by lawful inheritance or pur- 
chase, has any descendant of a Pilgrim father, or 
descendant of a recent immigrant, or yesterday's 
arrival, better than the claim of the poorest South 
Pacific islander? There is no possible point at 
which we can draw a line and logically say that, 
if we abolish private property in land, all on one 
side of that line may share American land and all 
on the other may not. It is universal ownership 
or private ownership. To abolish private control, 
with either immigration or growth of population 
practically unrestricted, would be to offer the land 
of America to the world; and this would mean a 
rapid falling of standards to Asiatic level. Land 
to-day in America is not monopolized. Thousands 
of men who started life without a dollar are every 
year becoming land owners — not only in rural 
districts but in the high-priced districts of the big 
cities. They are doing this without benefit of 
fraud or favor. They are doing it in manly fash- 
ion out of manly virtues. 

Of the profit which they make out of the grow- 
ing demand for land, something will be said later. 
This, as already indicated, properly should be 
taken by the community. It may be taken, how- 

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ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

ever, without interfering with the general prin- 
ciple of private control. 

We find, then, the principle of private property 
in the land of America defended by three consid- 
erations : it has come about by natural process, 
without artificial interference or abuse except dis- 
tinct frauds which violate the spirit of the prin- 
ciple itself; it furnishes a stimulus to improve- 
ments; it is the protection of those with high 
standards against encroachment by the teeming 
crowds of those with low standards. 

Let us examine next the nature of private con- 
trol of capital. Whence came the capital which 
is now a great resource of this country? In 
comparatively slight degree it has come as in- 
vestment from abroad. Most of it has come 
through the earnings of labor of the past, or the 
accumulated profits upon the capital of the past 
invested by our early settlers and later immi- 
grants. It is very easy to argue that the chief 
source of all capital is labor, because originally 
the only sources of wealth in the world, aside 
from the forces of nature, were natural materials 
and labor. Only when the product of labor is 
in excess of consumption and that excess is saved 
and used to assist in new production, does capital 
come into existence ; and all capital in succeeding 

199 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

time has been of the same nature; and just as 
labor produced the first capital, so labor has pro- 
duced all other capital with the assistance of the 
capital previously produced by labor. It is true, 
then, that all capital is accumulation from the 
labor of the past. So far we must go with the 
radical socialist. Before we go farther, however, 
we must ask who is entitled to the payment for 
the use of that accumulation. The socialist 
would give it always to the laborer. This is right 
if he means the laborer whose labor produced 
what was accumulated. We must not forget that 
so far as capital has been accumulated at all, the 
original labor which produced that capital has 
never enjoyed the consumption of what it pro- 
duced, for if the product had been consumed it 
could not have been accumulated as capital. The 
laborer who accumulated it may have received 
interest for lending the accumulation, but he can- 
not have eaten his cake and still have it to lend. 
So long as he lends it, he has not enjoyed its 
consumption; and yet if he produced it, it was 
his to enjoy. If American liberty is not a mock- 
ery, a man may pass such accumulation to his 
descendants to enjoy or lend as they choose. The 
labor of the past is robbed if a man may not enjoy 
the fruit of the toil which his ancestors endured 

200 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

for their descendants' sakes. It is true that the 
earnings of capital do all belong to labor — but not 
necessarily to the labor of to-day. The labor 
of the past has refrained from enjoying all its 
product, and much of that product has been 
handed down as inheritance to men who are not 
to-day laborers. Some of it has been transferred 
bodily in exchange, for land or for other things, 
by the laborers who produced it, to men who are 
not laborers. It is not the American notion of 
justice to declare void such a contract of ex- 
change. It may be true that often the exchange 
was not a wise one or a fair one. It may be 
true that unwise and unfair exchanges are made 
to-day. The remedy lies, however, not in forbid- 
ding the right of exchange, not in declaring void 
contracts of the past which are now seen to have 
been one-sided, not in demolishing the system 
under which capital may be transferred, but in 
providing that the exchange must henceforth be 
fair. 

One ground of objection to the present indus- 
trial system this argument seems at first sight 
not to answer. It is sometimes said that the 
laborer never gets the full product of his labor, 
even in the first instance, and therefore he never 
gets a fair opportunity to save and accumulate 

201 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

stored labor product; in other words, he is shut 
out from the possession of capital. Our argu- 
ment up to this point has only defended the right 
to capital once saved : it does not defend an em- 
ployer in giving the laborer less than the full 
product of his labor. In actual industry, unfor- 
tunately, it is impossible usually to know just 
what is the product of labor. We can see easily 
what is the product of capital and labor together, 
but we can as little tell the share of each as we 
can tell the share of sun, of soil, and of water in 
producing vegetation. Capital without labor can 
produce nothing; and labor without the use of 
stored labor product of the past, or capital, pro- 
duces insignificantly. 

The fact is simply that the laborer wishes some 
one to supply him with capital to assist him in 
production, and the employer wishes to find some 
one who will, under his own direction, employ 
his capital. The arrangement is a clear matter 
of bargain and sale. The laborer buys the use 
of capital as clearly as the employer buys labor; 
but the laborer buys more than capital, and he 
pays usually an uncertain sum. He buys, usu- 
ally, not only capital — in the form of tools and 
advance payment before his product is marketed 
— but the use of land and some of its products, 

202 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

and he buys direction or supervision of his labor 
— that is, he engages some one to coordinate his 
labor with that of his fellows and find a market 
for his product ; and he pays not a fixed sum, but 
all that is left of the combined product — of labor, 
capital, and land — after the fixed sum agreed 
upon as wages has been deducted. This may be 
an unfortunate arrangement in any particular 
case; but nothing iniquitous lies in the principle. 
As a matter of fact, the most important thing 
that the laborer buys, in the exchange just out- 
lined, is direction or supervision of his labor. It 
plays far more part in his payment than what he 
pays for the use of capital and land, and rightly 
is the amount left uncertain ; for the value of the 
total product is influenced to a high degree by 
the direction which labor receives. In other 
words, the value of the product varies with the 
value of the direction, even when the laborer's 
own share in the productiveness is unchanged. 
It follows, then, that the laborer can afford to 
pay for superior direction practically the excess 
of product that the superior direction yields. 
This is just what the present industrial system 
provides for. The laborer hires direction, and 
pays for that direction what it proves itself worth 
— namely, the total product less a fixed sum pre- 

203 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

viously arranged by contract as the measure of 
the laborer's own share in productiveness. 

Unfortunately, critics of the present industrial 
system often forget that though the direction of 
labor is connected with capital, the amount de- 
ducted from the total product and kept as pay- 
ment for direction is in no sense what the laborer 
is paying for the use of capital That amount is 
really payment for labor — labor of a high order. 
It may or may not chance to go to those who own 
the capital employed. The share of total product 
kept by capital as capital is comparatively small. 
Capital is too quick-moving to escape the leveling 
influence of competition. The competition of 
laborers for employment with capital leaves 
always some share of the total product for cap- 
italists; but the competition of capitalists to find 
employment for their capital makes it impossible 
for the capital share of total products ever to 
reach a high figure. It is simply not true that 
capital gets the lion's share, or anything like the 
lion's share, of total product. So far as it gets 
anything at all, it does so only because laborers 
wish to produce something with the aid of cap- 
ital, and they bid for it in the form of an agree- 
ment to work for wages ; and this share obtained 
by capital is simply compensation for the use, by 

204 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

present laborers, of the products of past labor 
which the producers were too provident to con- 
sume. If any man's capital has come chiefly not 
from his own accumulated labor product, but 
from what he has withheld from other laborers 
as compensation for the use of his original cap- 
ital, the principle is still true : he — or some one 
in his behalf — has at some time saved labor 
product, and laborers, wishing to use that capital, 
have agreed in return for its use to accept a fixed 
wage and leave the balance of the joint product 
to him ; and so even in his case the origin of the 
capital was labor which has not yet been compen- 
sated, and its growth has been due to the further 
postponement of consumption because later la- 
borers wished to use the product for their own 
advantage. Our whole capital, then, has only 
two normal origins-— past labor which has handed 
down a part of its product to our time, and nat- 
ural accretion of this because later labor, un- 
equipped with capital of its own, has offered and 
given compensation for the use of that transmit- 
ted product. The possibility, for every man, of 
accumulating capital of his own, even under the 
wage system, we shall see later. 

The real complaint of labor against the share 
of product demanded by capital, then, is simply 

205 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

that the heirs and assigns of the labor of the past, 
who are the owners of capital to-day, are getting 
more of the product of the present than the labor 
of the past could justly claim. The laborer of 
to-day seems not to realize that this assault upon 
inheritance from the labor of the past must in- 
evitably in its result, if it has any result at all, 
weaken the claim of his heirs, and even his own 
claim in later years, to his own savings of to-day. 
No man will save if he cannot expect to control 
the fruit of the saving. To refuse to pay for 
the use of capital is to take away the chief motive 
for saving. Then only primitive methods of pro- 
duction are possible. 

If it is true that the labor of the past has been 
too well compensated, so that it, or its heirs, has 
accumulated capital which in turn is to-day re- 
ceiving too great a share of the product of its use, 
the quarrel of the laborer is not with profits or 
interest themselves, as he seems to think it is, 
but with a mere detail of compensation for the 
use of capital. The quarrel is not with the pres- 
ent industrial system, but with certain methods 
of its operation. His objection to the profits of 
capital as such can have no ground whatever un- 
less he can show that labor stripped of all capital 
can with its own bare hands applied to the natural 

206 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

resources of the earth produce more than the la- 
borer is to-day receiving. If he can do this, the 
wonder is that the laborer is so eager to obtain 
employment under modern conditions and that he 
does not rush out on the bare land — and land can 
still be bought or hired for a reasonable price — 
and secure his rights by natural production. 
Everyone must admit, as the socialists are fond 
of asserting, that all the capital in the world is 
found to be, if traced back far enough, saved 
wages or savings from the payment for the use 
of saved wages; it belongs, however, not neces- 
sarily to present labor, but to the heirs and assigns 
of past labor. It enormously helps to increase the 
product of industry. Neither those who pro- 
duced it nor their assigns have taken the benefit 
of its production — or it would not now exist as 
capital. It is only justice that they should re- 
ceive compensation for its use. This is the de- 
fense of private ownership of capital. 

One feature of private control, both of land 
and of capital, is commonly neglected. We fail 
usually to realize that ownership does not neces- 
sarily mean consumption. If the capitalist con- 
sumes his capital in riotous living, he no longer 
is a capitalist and no longer controls things. The 
landholder does not usually consume his land. 

207 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

He must employ men to cultivate it, or, if he 
keeps it for enjoyment as an estate, other men 
get enjoyment out of it. Many a toiler passing a 
landed proprietor's estate gets far more pleasure 
out of the trees, the grass, the flowers, than does 
the owner. However selfishly intended, the 
maintenance of such estates is a public benefac- 
tion. The railroad or industrial magnate, with 
millions of dollars at his beck, cannot enjoy those 
millions. The mere fact that he controls them 
entails disagreeable duties, self-denials, encroach- 
ments on his leisure. He can consume only a 
limited number of creature comforts. The rest 
of his power is devoted to the uses of other men 
— often unwisely, but no less certainly. His 
lands must be used, his capital must be employed, 
or he makes a colossal failure ; and he must find a 
way to make it worth the while of other men to 
work for him. He has no real control in his own 
hands after all : he can do nothing without the 
consent and the cooperation of the working 
masses. It is in their power to make and unmake 
him. 

It is true, as often remarked, that in some cir- 
cumstances capital can wait in a struggle with 
labor ; and labor, since it must live, can be forced 
to an untimely surrender. These circumstances, 

208 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

however, are not natural, and they do not arise 
directly from our industrial system. No reason 
can be found why labor should be dependent on 
capitalists. The dependence is really on the other 
side. We have seen that there are no artificial 
restrictions on land or on the accumulation of 
capital. There is no reason why the laborer 
should not have his own land and capital. The 
explanation lies in a simple economic law. 

It is true that in any community the rate of 
w r ages must be high enough to support laborers 
and at least minimum families; for if it is too 
low marriages and births decrease, or deaths in- 
crease, and the decline or limited growth of popu- 
lation increases the rate of wages. This law no 
monopoly of land and of capital can prevent, for 
land and capital without labor are helpless. If, 
then, with a rate of wages sufficient to maintain 
a family, the laborer postpones marriage— or, at 
least, propagation- — he has an available fund out 
of which he may save ; that is, the money which 
a family would cost him he may now save. Cap- 
ital and land, if he wishes to buy them, are his. 
This is a possibility that society perforce presents 
him, for automatically the rate of wages adjusts 
itself so as to yield enough to support a family; 
and the laborers themselves fix the standard of a 

209 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

family, for wages must continue at that point at 
which the laborer is willing to raise a family. 
If he declines to raise a family until he has ac- 
cumulated capital enough to make a modest in- 
dependent start in life, wages will inevitably rise 
- — because of the competition of capitalists for 
labor — so high as to make that start possible. 

To many this prospect for the laborer seems 
not happy. Why, they ask, should he be forced, 
even temporarily, to deny himself the satisfaction 
of marriage and family life? Has he not an in- 
herent right to raise a family? Just here is the 
test of the whole matter. A man has a right to 
raise a family if he has the means to support 
it and to equip it for self-support when his time 
of service is over. Let us look at this funda- 
mentally. No man descended from heaven or 
came from the caves of the earth. Every man 
had a father who begot him either consciously or 
in brutish lust. If the father begot the child 
without the means to support it or the prospect 
of making it self-supporting, he took the risk 
that either the child should not survive or the 
community must assume the burden of its sup- 
port. He begot exactly as a beast of the field 
begets. The history of poverty and of charity 
shows that a large part of mankind breed with 

210 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

little thought of consequences. When the com- 
munity guarantees the support of children, the 
population increases at a pace that soon brings all 
to destitution. Every community abounds in ir- 
responsible persons who are governed chiefly by 
animal instinct. Of course calamities overtake 
even the most provident and excellent families, 
but taking things in the large it is true that if a 
present-day family, descended from untold gen- 
erations of ancestry, has acquired no land, has 
accumulated no capital, has acquired no produc- 
tive skill or personal charm that makes its services 
desired in the community, it has bred in an un- 
civilized fashion. It has been said that " civiliza- 
tion in every one of its aspects is a struggle 
against the animal instincts." The family that 
we have described is not yet civilized. To grant 
to such a family the right to breed without 
economic provision for the offspring is to impose 
upon the civilized portion of the community the 
certainty that its land will soon be overcrowded, 
that its capital will soon be demanded for uses 
which may violate the very aims of its voluntary 
accumulation, that the standard of living will 
soon be forced down to the lowest point at which 
human beings will breed and survive. This is 
no part of any one's ideal, and it is absolutely at 
15 211 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

variance with the American notions not only of 
liberty and democracy, but even of brotherhood 
itself. This is only a degradation of brotherhood. 

Charity is one of the sweetest things in life; 
but the spring of charity is a sense of brother- 
hood. If a man's need arises not from those 
things in him which are human, but from those 
which are irresponsible, unbrotherly, brutish, the 
quality of mercy is strained. So great need ex- 
ists for charity in cases where it can go along 
with brotherly love, that to lavish it— or the pre- 
tense of it — on those who hamper civilization is 
worse than extravagance. 

A man who has no capital, no land, and not 
skill enough to assure him of wages to support a 
family, should postpone propagation until he has 
attained what he needs. This means simply that 
since his ancestry has discredited him, as any an- 
cestry must do which breeds faster than it can 
equip its offspring, he must prove his superiority 
to his ancestry by rising above the uncivilized 
plane in which he was born. He must show that 
he is superior to mere animal instinct. Since no 
community can be sure of supporting in dignity 
all who are born — or would be born if support 
were guaranteed — he must show by self-restraint 
or late marriage that he is fit to live as one in a 

212 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

civilized community. This is not only his duty: 
it is his privilege. He should rejoice in the op- 
portunity to show his manliness. If he has re- 
cently come from a land where no opportunities 
were open to him or to his ancestors to accumu- 
late capital, land, or skill, he will not, if he is 
manly, now claim that those who are fortunate 
here shall divide with him on that account; for 
granting such a claim would establish for every 
newcomer a claim against him if he ever by 
force of energy and will accumulates capital and 
acquires land. On the contrary, if he is manly, he 
will welcome the opportunity to show that in this 
land where freedom prevails he can do without 
favor or charity what other men have done before 
him. 

Sometimes we hear the statement that post- 
ponement of marriage and self-control in mar- 
riage mean increase of sexual immorality. This 
has been discussed in the chapter on the marriage 
tie, with the conclusion that marriage is not a 
safety valve for lust, and that civilization de- 
mands restraint within the marriage relation as 
well as out. 

Historically, we have been shown again and 
again that the race which has made a failure of 
life has either bred too fast for its sustenance or 

213 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

has fallen into moral degeneracy. Race suicide 
consists not in the self-control which gives small 
families of well-begotten children/but in the self- 
abandonment which either breeds thoughtlessly 
or indulges lust. The law of evolution is that the 
unfit do not survive. This law is working in hu- 
man progress. Those who breed thoughtlessly 
must not be allowed to stop progress ; those who 
yield to vice must be allowed to attain their own 
destruction : the institution of marriage must not 
be prostituted for the protection of either class. 
To say that the begetting of eight or ten children 
is a benefit to the community is at once to raise 
the question, What can those children do for the 
community? Can they do more than merely 
move things ? Can they plan things ? Can they 
contribute to the physical and spiritual welfare of 
the community? If not, they are not needed. 
Already in the world are all the people needed to 
do the world's work of moving things. If we 
were to distribute the overcrowded populations 
of many districts to the sparsely settled regions, 
the manual labor needed for man's happiness 
would be supplied. It is in the task of planning 
things, of exercising judgment, of understanding 
how to get the good out of life, that we need help. 
Yet it is just the class capable only of moving 

214 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

things which usually breeds thoughtlessly. It is 
also the class which is chiefly interested in things, 
as distinguished from ideas or ideals, which lives 
in lust. The protection of those who order their 
lives for wise parenthood and for. the care of their 
offspring demands that the institution of private 
ownership and control of capital and of land shall 
continue. 

It will be noted that the only defense of owner- 
ship of capital and land so far undertaken has 
been not for corporate ownership, but for private 
ownership. The springs of progress, as already 
indicated, lie chiefly in parental responsibility. 
The essence of corporation control is irresponsi- 
bility ; and the opinion has already been expressed 
here that the human race is not really happier — 
though in many outward physical things more at 
its ease — for the invention of corporation law. 
The adjustment of our economic difficulties lies 
not in an abolition of the present system of 
ownership of the agents of production, but in 
provisions that the control be so exercised as to 
fulfill the purpose for which it was inaugurated 
— namely, the stimulus to energy and to foresight 
and to providence, the improvement of land, the 
preservation of natural resources, the saving of 
wealth, all these so that in later years, or in later 

215 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

generations, greater prosperity may be attained 
out of the fruits of the present. 

We have been examining the general defense 
for the private control of capital and land. We 
have seen that when the " right to work " is made 
to mean a right to demand land and capital to 
work with, it has no ground to stand on. It is 
simply a demand that the bad fortune of one 
shall be alleviated out of the good fortune of 
another, even when the good fortune of the sec- 
ond has been due to energy and foresight and 
the bad fortune of the first is no fault of the sec- 
ond. The absurdity of the demand is increased 
when we find, what is the case, that if the same 
demand were made for all mankind (and why 
not, if for any?), the good fortune would shrink 
into comparative insignificance when generally 
distributed, and a general level of poor fortune 
would be universal. The absurdity of the de- 
mand is extreme when we find the bad fortune 
due to error or fault in the unfortunate or his 
ancestors. The results of the self-sacrifice, the 
providence, the self-restraint of generations 
would go for naught in the swelling sea of 
mankind. The rich lands of America would 
soon be overcrowded with a struggling, ever- 
increasing horde, and the capital of America 

216 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

would be wholly inadequate to furnish for labor 
implements and materials that would yield enough 
to support that crowd according to dignified hu- 
man standards. 

It is worth while to go farther and see the neg- 
ative argument for private control — that is, the 
effect of its alternative. The alternative to pri- 
vate ownership of land and capital is nationaliza- 
tion, or state control, of the instruments of pro- 
duction. This is the extreme of democracy, and 
at first glance it looks like brotherhood; but ex- 
amination shows that it is very shortsighted 
brotherhood, and it surely is not liberty. State 
control of all industry means either that any man 
may obtain, from the state, land and capital to 
work with in his own way, or that the state shall 
direct the application of his labor ; for labor, land, 
and capital must work together. The first of 
these alternatives means that the choice of indus- 
try shall be made by the laborer, and then some 
one shall be responsible to determine how much 
land and capital shall be supplied him, what se- 
curity for their proper use he shall offer, and 
what compensation he shall give. This must be 
done for every self-supporting individual in the 
land ; for with the abolition of private ownership 
no one will have income from any source but 

217 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

labor, and no one will have private land or pri- 
vate capital to work with. Merely as an admin- 
istrative task this is something oppressive to 
think of. The other alternative is for the com- 
munity to direct labor as well as the use of land 
and capital. Some one must be responsible to di- 
rect each worker to the w T ork for which he is 
apparently best fitted — the scavenger, the sewer 
man, the farmer, the clerk, the teacher, the artist. 
It is not easy for the common man to find sat- 
isfaction in this sort of government supervision. 
Most of us are a little skeptical about the ability 
of most men to administer the affairs of others. 
Most of us are wondering by what process the 
corruption, the self-seeking, and the inefficiency 
of government officers, as we find them to-day, 
are to be exchanged for honor, broad vision, and 
ability, in the scheme of state control. The temp- 
tations and the honest difficulties under the 
new regime would be increased multitudinously, 
for the functions of government would pervade 
almost all our affairs. The tasks of administra- 
tion would be infinitely more disagreeable to 
sensitive and refined natures, for they would in- 
volve decisions of occupation affecting the pride 
and inner happiness of multitudes. Democracy 
has been commonly blind to the finer qualities of 

218 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

men, and politics would under this scheme be far 
more petty and yet far more penetrating than to- 
day. The progress of the community would be 
intrusted to a majority vote where self-interest, 
as distinguished from community interest, is most 
pressing and immediate. Individual ideals would 
have no opportunity to grow and to push them- 
selves, for men would be under the thumb of the 
hordes of government administrators. 

A common complaint against the present 
regime is the selfish control of land and capital 
by private or corporate interests. Yet this con- 
trol is always by human agencies. By what 
agency can state control be maintained unless by 
men? Does enlarging the field of control, and 
scattering responsibility over a larger area, and 
increasing the difficulties of wise administration, 
promise improvement? 

As a final criticism on state control of the 
agents of production, we have only to recall that 
it is really based, in the last analysis, on what is 
commonly called " the right to live/' This usu- 
ally means simply the right to a living ; but, as in 
the case of " the right to work," the first phrase 
is so much more dramatic that it is commonly 
employed instead of the correct one. The com- 
munity cannot recognize any claim to a living 

219 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

when the community employs no agencies to limit 
births. Progress implies responsibility. The re- 
sponsibility must go with the final creating 
agency. If we leave uncontrolled creating power 
with parents, parents must perform the duty of 
supporting their children and of preparing those 
children for self-support. There is no such thing 
as a right to be maintained alive as against a 
community which has no use for the life. If the 
life cannot maintain itself — that is, if those who 
created it cannot make it self-supporting or worth 
while for the community to support — it has no 
reason to be. The spirit of brotherhood does take 
care of the unfortunate, and happily so; but to 
demand as an enforceable claim what is only a 
voluntary charity is to open the floodgates of in- 
crease among the irresponsible. The duty of par- 
enthood is toward the future — that is its very es- 
sence. The course of the ages is forward. In the 
family relation parents exist for their children, 
not children for their parents, and the order of 
nature is reversed when we for a moment admit 
that parenthood may be divorced from responsi- 
bility or that children owe their allegiance to the 
preceding generation and not to the following. 
If I cannot earn sustenance, I never should have 
been born ; if I cannot make my life worth while, 

220 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

I should not continue to live. This is not a rec- 
ommendation to suicide, as the next chapter will 
show; it suggests only that the laws of nature 
should be allowed to work, or the life should be 
made worth while. For the thoughtful parent, 
the possibility of private control of the agents of 
production is a great hope for the protection and 
welfare of his offspring, and it is the only check 
on the tendency to destructive increase in those 
who are unfit. 

That the private control of land and of capital 
leaves in the hands of individuals much power 
that may be abused, that the law has not yet 
learned to forestall such harm, that public opin- 
ion has not yet awakened to the possibilities of 
iniquity under it, may be readily admitted. The 
point is that the system is a natural historical 
growth. It is not a manufactured thing imposed 
on the community by the capitalist or the land- 
holder, but a product of the development of the 
country. It has often produced unfairness, but 
such unfairness has been a chance consequence; 
the system was not devised to produce unfair- 
ness, and it has about it no element of the arbi- 
trary. It may not be perfect, but it is not in 
itself an engine of iniquity. No reason can be 
found to doubt that the natural evils arising under 

221 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

it may be corrected by man-made changes in it. 
Whatever we attempt to do with it, however, we 
must realize that we are dealing with a growth, 
an evolution, and that it is likely, from its histor- 
ical origin, to have such virtues as man-made 
structures usually lack. 

One of the abuses under our present industrial 
system is the profit derived from the necessities 
of our neighbors, as already indicated in the illus- 
tration of the island divided between two fam- 
ilies. It is true that the small family has the 
right to hold its land for its own uses, and that 
it may enjoy that land in its own way so long as 
that way does not injure the other family. If, 
however, the small family can spare some of its 
land and lets it to the other, the profit derived 
from the rent is not due to any energy, foresight, 
or providence on the part of the large family, but 
to the improvidence of the small. The large fam- 
ily has by its increase created a demand out of 
its own necessities, and it is bidding against itself 
for a privilege. As this family continues to in- 
crease, moreover, the pressure for land increases, 
and rents rise. It is obvious that this increase is 
not due to any virtue of the smaller family. 
With this increase the smaller family had nothing 
to do. In strict justice, therefore, it deserves no 

222 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

profit. If it makes sacrifices in order to lend 
land to its neighbor, or if it has improved land, 
it is entitled to compensation ; but its demand for 
increase in land rentals due to the growth of gen- 
eral population is no part of any defense of the 
right of property in land. A man may hold land 
for his own use, and if he acquired it honestly 
no one can say him nay; but if he tries to get a 
profit by selling it or renting it, and that profit 
has arisen from increased general demand for 
land, he is trying to take for himself something 
that the community has created. That increase 
of value belongs to the community that created it. 
This " unearned increment " the advocates of 
the " single tax " wish the community to take in 
the form of taxation on land. They desire that 
all land shall be taxed for the full value of the 
rental less the value of improvements and com- 
pensation already given to previous owners. 
The violation of liberty in this is that a man may 
be by it prohibited, because he cannot pay the tax, 
from putting the land to use which to him is de- 
sirable but to the community may not seem so. 
For example, the maintenance of an estate, with 
not only the beauty of natural objects but peace 
and quiet away from the noise and bustle of city 
din, is a desirable thing. Every family should 

22$ 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

have plenty of land about its home. If popula- 
tion had not multiplied with undue rapidity, land 
would abound for such a purpose. The families 
which, by restraint, foresight, saving, have pro- 
vided such a home are deserving of credit and 
protection. Yet the application of the single-tax 
idea in its crude form would force thousands of 
such estates on the market, to be cut up into tene- 
ment-house lots or factory sites. The integrity 
of the home demands the integrity of land about 
which the associations of home may cluster. The 
strict application of the single tax means that the 
standards of the irresponsible multitude must per- 
force set the normal standard of land ownership 
for every individual. 

Though it is true that the individual has no 
right to make a profit out of the necessities of 
his fellows, it is also true that they, by irrespon- 
sible growth in numbers, have no right to demand 
his surrender of rights acquired and maintained 
by thrift. The justice of the matter is that only 
when a man tries to realize profit, either by sale 
or by rental, out of the unearned increment, 
should the community claim that it has created 
anything of value to him. As a matter of fact, 
until that time the community has usually done 
him harm and not good. Thousands of beautiful 

224 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

homes throughout the country have been ruined 
by the march of change— the noisy, dusty trolley 
car, the destructive automobile, the swarming 
tenement, the busy shop, the clattering loom. 
The only escape from the annoyances of too much 
company is in the possession of property in land. 
Any attempt to restrict one's right in this, so far 
as personal enjoyment of it is concerned, is a 
violation of fundamental liberty ; but the demand 
that no man shall make a profit out of it is simple 
brotherhood. 

Another abuse under our industrial system is 
the occasional power of employers, under peculiar 
conditions, to take advantage of the necessities 
of labor. It is true that laborers have sometimes 
thought themselves forced to pay too much for 
land and capital to work with ; that is, they have 
accepted a rate of wages so low that the amount 
of product left for the employer was far more 
than enough to compensate him for his land and 
capital employed. This has never been for long 
or for much, however, for we have already seen 
the laborer's power to acquire capital and land 
for his own use, and his escape has always been 
open except in temporary stress. The actual 
causes of non-employment or unfair wages are 
always inefficient or otherwise unsatisfactory 

225 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

labor, sluggish times rendering employers loth to 
run their works, or a supply of labor so much 
in excess of the immediate demand that employ- 
ers without the feeling of brotherhood can set 
laborers in competition with one another to their 
own detriment. Each of these conditions is un- 
fortunate, and we may well wish them impossible, 
but they have come from purely natural causes. 
The first is due to the labor itself; the second is 
one of the hazards such as are common to all 
forms of life; the third lies equally in the hard- 
ness of heart of the employers and in the improvi- 
dence of the laboring class. None of them is 
directly caused by the present industrial system. 
If the system were abolished, to be sure, this ex- 
act form of evil could not recur; but we should 
be likely to face as a permanent and therefore 
hopeless condition, already outlined, an evil rather 
worse. The remedy lies not in abolishing the 
system, but in creating a sound, effective public 
opinion, through the agency of dominant notions 
of right, which shall curb the power of the pros- 
perous and ease the dependence of the unfortu- 
nate — not as charity but as brotherhood. This 
is possible without infringing any sacred liberty ; 
and this can be done for all the abuses that our 
system leaves possible. 

226 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

In our industrial system we find attempts to 
limit the liberty of the individual in his dispo- 
sition not only of land and of capital, but even 
of labor. Such limitations have been imposed 
mainly by trade unions. Fear among the unions 
that there shall not be enough work to go round 
has led them to attempt to restrict the perform- 
ance of each individual. This is based on a curi- 
ous economic fallacy. It neglects the fact that in 
modern industry no man makes much of what he 
consumes. Everything is based on a division of 
labor, an exchange of commodities. The amount 
of goods a man can get is limited absolutely by 
the amount he produces. The more he makes, 
the more he has to exchange ; and the fact that he 
and other men are willing to work proves that 
he and they are eager for more goods. To say, 
then, that there can be too many goods produced, 
so long as any men are willing to work, is to 
commit the absurdity of saying that men must 
be prevented from working for fun. In limiting 
the hours or productiveness of labor, in the hope 
of extending the field for employment, the unions 
are simply cutting off the supply of goods out of 
which labor may be paid. 

It is a curious fact that no concerted effort 
seems ever to have been made by laborers to ex- 

16 22J 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

ercise any sort of check over the repeated increase 
of numbers among those of the lowest economic 
classes. The surplus of labor has long been 
known to be among those who are unfit for any 
but the lowest classes of work. Except in times 
of extreme depression, the demand for the high- 
est class of labor, both manual and mental, has 
never been met. It seems the height of mathe- 
matical absurdity, in the attempt to get a larger 
measure of wages for each participant, to reduce 
the product to be divided rather than to limit the 
number among whom the division is to be made. 
The labor unions have, indeed, sometimes en- 
deavored to reduce the number of participants by 
excluding from their ranks all who do not meet 
their requirements for membership and by limit- 
ing the number of apprentices who shall be taken 
in each trade. Though this may be successful in 
maintaining wages in a particular line of work, its 
effect is always to increase distress in the trades 
which are thus left to bear the burden of the in- 
creasing population. It is based on distrust of one 
another and eagerness to take advantage one of 
another. It shows that strife is not merely be- 
tween employer and employee, but quite as much 
between man and man. Here is no dominant no- 
tion of the spirit of either liberty or brotherhood. 

228 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

In the struggles between laborers and employ- 
ers the trade unions have found some apparent 
advantage in what is called " collective bargain- 
ing/' This presupposes that a large number of 
men together may secure a more just bargain 
than individuals. This considered on the theory 
of averages is, of course, true. The laboring 
men have objected to the individual bargain for 
wages on the ground that it tends to degrade la- 
bor to a mere commodity, whereas the collective 
bargain forces a recognition of the human ele- 
ment. As a matter of fact, collective bargaining 
neglects exactly that element; and upon just that 
element any principle whatever ought to lay most 
stress. The value of any particular workman to 
any employer is dependent to great extent upon 
the personal quality of the employee, except, in- 
deed, so far as the labor union by setting a stand- 
ard minimum of efficiency has reduced him to a 
mere automaton. In very few lines of work is it 
true that men are equal even though they on the 
surface appear to produce like results. The real 
results of a man's labor are dependent upon the 
quality of his work as well as upon the amount 
that he produces, and that quality is not always 
in tangible things. In such matters as watchful- 
ness, responsibility, and growth, the employer 

229 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

finds a vast difference between one man and an- 
other ; and these can spring only out of something 
approaching loyalty — if not to the employer, at 
least to the work, to the idea of excellence. Any 
business relation which has been established 
through collective bargaining, especially after a 
contest between employer and employed, is 
cheated of that loyalty which is at the basis not 
only of all brotherhood, but of all effective labor. 
Many an employer, through fear of interference 
with his plan of work, has been compelled, in 
order to compensate himself for the great losses 
caused by the risk of strikes and other labor dif- 
ficulties, to pay normally a much lower rate of 
wages than would be possible and probable if he 
had freedom to arouse in his employees the spirit 
of loyalty. The unions have so thoroughly inter- 
fered with the privileges of a laborer to do his 
best for his employer that the old-fashioned esprit 
de corps which made many shops pleasant has dis- 
appeared, and many of the human elements in the 
relation of employee and employer have been de- 
stroyed. This, again, violates not only liberty 
but brotherhood. It is founded on distrust. The 
distrust may be warranted, but it is none the less 
unfortunate. 

The fact is that distrust prevails throughout 
230 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

the business world. We have seen that the labor- 
ers distrust each other. The common failures of 
cooperation and profit-sharing are further illus- 
trations. The employers distrust employees, for 
they know that many receive wages for work 
which they do not do ; and the employees distrust 
employers, for they fear that they will not be paid 
for what is actually done. Finally, business men 
distrust each other, for they expect every man to 
charge for his goods what he can get rather than 
what they are w r orth. This distrust is not a prod- 
uct of our present industrial system. Opportu- 
nities for it would be just as great under any 
system of state control of industry. The ground 
for it lies in our judgment of our fellow men ; and, 
as has already been pointed out, any state system 
must be administered by men. If we distrust men 
nowadays, when many of our affairs are in our 
own control, how much more should we distrust 
them when as state agents they should manage 
many of our affairs for us ? The remedy for these 
distrusts and strifes lies not in destroying in- 
dividual control and individual responsibility, but 
in arousing dominant notions of brotherhood 
which operate, through individual control and in- 
dividual responsibility, to seek a common end. 
We saw long ago that the mainspring of prog- 
231 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

ress is in the individual seeking, out of that which 
is to him worth while, to impress his personality 
on the world about him — and this he may do not 
only in his life but through his descendants. The 
most precious thing in the world, then, is liberty. 
To prevent liberty from becoming license, how- 
ever, the spirit of brotherhood must put us in 
right relation to other personalities, and democ- 
racy must give that spirit of brotherhood a tan- 
gible guiding expression. We must see, how- 
ever, that of these three the greatest is liberty, for 
it alone is a creative force ; the others are guiding 
forces. In our economic life, therefore, we need 
to see that in our efforts to eradicate evils, to 
suppress abuses, we do not sap that liberty which 
is a spring of progress. The industrial system 
which has grown up under American liberty is at 
the core sound, for it furnishes to every man the 
maximum opportunity for self-development. It 
does leave the way open for hardship, for mis- 
fortune, for misery; but there is tragedy in life 
under any conceivable system. Not all men are 
equally fortunate in birth, in talent, in charm, 
and no economic system except absolute com- 
munism can give men economic equality ; and that 
would reduce the sense of responsibility so much 
that in a few generations the general standard of 

232 



ECONOMIC FREEDOM 

living would fall to a semi-brutish level. Then 
those who were fit to survive in a dignified exist- 
ence would rise in rebellion against the rest, and 
civilization would begin once more on the in- 
dividualistic basis. 

It is not true that a system which leaves the 
way open to hardships, misfortune, and misery is 
necessarily a bad system. The fact is that the 
Supreme Being has allowed man to suffer sin, 
pain, sorrow; and many evils we have not yet 
learned how to avoid. They seem to be a part 
of the training of life, and without them life 
would be not life at all, but only automatic action. 
The economic evils are only some among the 
many that we endure. We may hope in the prog- 
ress of the race to learn how to avoid some of 
them ; but to arraign any system because it leaves 
economic misfortune possible is to talk in a child's 
foolishness, not in a man's strength. Some dis- 
cussion of the general problem of evil will be 
found in the next, and concluding, chapter. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

IF a philosophy is good for anything it must 
bring together the disjointed experiences of 
life and put them into a unity that represents the 
worth of life as a whole. Not until a man has 
attempted to construct his philosophy can he say 
that he has seriously tried to make the most of 
his personal opportunities. The really human 
thing about any life is simply what that life con- 
siders best worth while. No person was ever in- 
teresting unless to some quest he gave at least 
half-souled devotion — unless to him something 
was supremely worth while. The aim may have 
been low, as low as can be conceived ; but if effort 
and struggle and enthusiasm were there, the life 
is interesting to every student of human nature. 
The aim of a life is the real test of its belief — its 
religion. This is true, too, whether a man has 
tried to think out his aim or is unaware of the mo- 
tives that actuate him. It is true whether he is 
an adherent of the traditional doctrines of the 

234 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

evangelical Christian denominations, is a so-called 
liberal thinker, or is a mere materialist: in the 
first case, the supreme thing to him is salvation 
through faith in the Cross ; in the second, it is the 
application of the principle of love to all the affairs 
of life; in the last, it is the maximum ultimate 
physical comfort and pleasure. That supreme 
thing gives his life a unity. 

Whatever phraseology we use, the test of a re- 
ligion must be practical — for a test that cannot 
be applied is no test at all. In the last analysis, 
then, a man's religion is what he believes prac- 
tically about the worth-while and the not-worth- 
while ; and of what he believes, the only practical 
tests are the efforts, the struggles, and the en- 
thusiasms of his life. Since the supremely in- 
teresting thing about any life is its quest for what 
seems to it best worth while, and since that is 
the true expression of its individuality, the last 
word about any life is its religion — the summing 
up of its relation to the Infinite as manifested in 
detail in its relations to the finite. To one man, 
only God is worth while, and the affairs of earth 
are dross, except as he can relate them to his 
conception of God; to another man, whatever is 
worth while is God — that is, his notion of God is 
derived from whatever seems to him best worth 

235 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

while. Whatever a man's notion is, unless it has 
so far entered into the fiber of his nature that it 
has with him become dominant, it is not his re- 
ligion. He may profess to believe this or that; 
but unless his conduct accords with the profession 
we know that he does not truly believe. Through- 
out our discussion we have dwelt upon the danger 
in obsessions and the value of making dominant 
our notions of good. When we come down to 
the root of things, we find that, after all, a man's 
religion is simply his chief dominant notion — 
that thing which for him looms biggest on the 
horizon of life. Very often it is not what he 
thinks it is. He has allowed some trivial thing 
to magnify itself until it hides the big thing. His 
conduct reveals the truth, for, as we have seen, 
that is determined absolutely by his estimate of 
the value of things. 

The failure of the church to influence men in 
America is due to a curious confusion of notions 
regarding the place of religion. Some churches, 
believing that religion is the whole of life, have 
undertaken to direct many of the details of living; 
and others, with the same nominal belief, have 
been very little concerned with living at all. One 
class has set itself up as competent to formulate 
a policy for all mankind in all situations, and the 

236 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

other has forgotten that religion is anything more 
than a theory of metaphysics. We are in the 
habit of congratulating ourselves on the gradual 
decline of the latter class, with its emphasis on 
theological doctrine ; but the rise of the former is 
nevertheless deplorable. The churches of this 
class have undertaken to convert the world to 
prohibition, to single-tax, to socialism, to what 
not. These things may be all very well in their 
time and place; or, perchance, they may not be 
good at all. The point is that they are at least 
disputable. 

Some men, seeing certain factors of life to be 
of great importance, believe heartily that social- 
ism would be a good thing in any time and place ; 
and they would gladly give their lives to bring 
it to acceptance. Other men, seeing other factors, 
would give their lives to prevent that acceptance. 
Similar differences of opinion appear concerning 
other policies for general welfare. No minister 
of the Gospel has any right to use his official in- 
fluence in the church to turn the scale one way or 
the other; for in the first place he doesn't really 
know how good or bad is socialism or any other 
policy of practical affairs, and in the second place 
the church should stand for something bigger 
than any form of social order. Socialism is a 

237 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

mere policy. Individualism is a mere policy. 
The church is not the organ of economic reform, 
though the teachings of the church should stimu- 
late much activity for reform; it is not the or- 
gan for political reform; it is not the organ for 
social reform. It is the organ for working upon 
the minds and hearts of men so that they shall be 
fundamentally moved to all good reforms or to 
make reform unnecessary; but the details of pol- 
icy and the disagreements arising from the differ- 
ences of point of view can be settled only in the 
practical world of affairs, and the church only 
weakens herself when she allows them to usurp 
her attention and to estrange those who disagree 
with her ministers on practical policies of the 
hour. 

Many church attendants are quite as competent 
to determine details of social and individual policy 
as are their ministers, and they are bored with 
sermons in which the blind are leading the blind 
— or the half blind are trying to lead the clear- 
sighted into the mists of surmise. Serious- 
minded men want inspiration, a sight of the 
visions that sometimes get dimmed in the clouds 
of conflicting passions, a freshening of the no- 
tions of eternal truth. They wish new power 
to comprehend old truths; but the application of 

238 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

these old truths to the problems of their individ- 
ual lives no minister or anyone else is competent 
to make for them. We, as lovers of liberty and 
individualism, resent attempts to prescribe cut- 
and-dried details of conduct. 

The church stands for the eternities, for the 
" things that we do know." When men are 
agreed upon the eternities, when they are domi- 
nated by the fundamental truths of life, they will 
no longer quarrel over the details of policy. 
What should we say of the father who is so busy 
settling the petty disputes of his children that he 
never has time to show them the principles of 
fraternity? The preacher's task is to keep open 
the sources of inspiration. His art should turn 
the flood into the channels where it will over- 
whelm " the world, the flesh, and the devil." The 
church should be the home of religious enthusi- 
asm; and that enthusiasm should take the form 
of tested notions that shall dominate the lives of 
men and teach them how, each in his individual 
way, they may bring about the brotherhood of 
righteousness. The church, in other words, 
should stand for the universal in religion, for that 
which ought to be common to all men and is 
helpful to all. With these common elements as 
a basis, as dominant notions, a man may go into 

239 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

the world and work out his own problems in liv- 
ing. That working out of his problems is his in- 
dividual religious life. 

To show the method of the religious life has 
really been the aim of this whole book, for in the 
last analysis religion is the whole of life. We 
began with the proof that we are all the creatures 
of our dominant notions. We have devoted most 
of our study to the possibilities of progress 
through the cultivation of sound dominant no- 
tions. The conclusion is obvious. The supreme 
delight and duty and aim of each soul is to search 
for and seize and cultivate and make dominant 
the notions that seem to that soul in its best mo- 
ments preeminently worth while. The best self 
is not necessarily the habitual self, and yet the 
notions at any time dominant control the life at 
that time. The soul is successful, then, just in 
that degree by which it brings the habitual self 
into agreement with the best self. This is ac- 
complished by making the dominant notions of 
the best self also the habitual dominant notions. 
It is simply making the exalted moments ha- 
bitual. This is the task and the joy of the reli- 
gious life. 

In matters of practical conduct, this means a 
constant recognition of several facts : first, we are 

240 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

the creatures of notion; second, our notions are 
not always true; third, we have not always the 
wish to take the trouble to find the truth, for we 
commonly have notions that something else is 
just now better worth doing; fourth, and here is 
the important thing, in our exalted moments, 
when we are at our best and desire the truth, we 
may search for the truth, snatch it, cling to it, 
impress it upon ourselves, fill ourselves with it, 
and put out the latch string for its return when 
the ill chances of practical affairs shall have 
crowded it out. In cherishing the notions that 
belong to our exalted moments we tend to make 
them dominant, and herein lies our hope of in- 
dividual progress. Similarly, we may often, 
by taking a favorable moment of exaltation, go far 
to quell a false notion that has sometimes beset 
us. By and by the old false notion, often refused 
admittance, will give permanent place to the new 
and true. Then the dominance is established and 
conduct is automatically brought into accord with 
the ideal. The means for utilizing the exalted 
moments to make sound notions dominant are of 
course various. One type of person will resort 
to self-examination and penance ; another, to con- 
templation ; another, to prayer ; another, to a sort 
of self-hypnotization. All these processes are 

241 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

somewhat akin to the method of so-called con- 
version; but the difference lies in the fact that 
whereas conversion is often a domination merely 
momentary, having no deep seat in either convic- 
tion or habit, this is a slow growth confirmed in 
both conviction and habit. 

It is well to put together the fundamental dom- 
inant notions that make up a part of American 
religion. Since our religion is, by our definition, 
the things we believe supremely worth while, it 
consists in large measure, if we are sincere, in the 
three ideals that have long occupied our attention. 
To fulfill our religious life, then, we must see 
these ideals so big that they cannot be overtopped 
by trivial notions of the moment. We are false 
to ourselves as individuals, false to the spirit of 
liberty, false to our destiny as a people, if we fail 
to provide every means that will insure the con- 
stant vision of those ideals before us. We must 
provide for that vision not only for ourselves in- 
dividually but also for our fellows. What does 
fraternity mean if we are to cherish our vision 
as a private preserve ? We have seen that a man 
must follow the light when he sees it. Our hope 
is in each bringing his light to the common meet- 
ing place and sharing it with others, letting them 
accept or reject. If any has a baleful light, the 

242 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

majority rule of democracy may compel him to 
hide it; but if it is evil in appearance only, be- 
cause too bright for the rest, he need suffer only 
disappointment — not discouragement, for it will 
surely prevail as men's eyes grow accustomed to 
the truth. 

Our fundamental American ideals, moreover, 
are adequate for guidance in the problems of prac- 
tical living, and that is the first obvious concern 
of religion. No serious problem of conduct is 
beyond solution by the principles of liberty, broth- 
erhood, democracy. The first involves not only 
the power but the duty to fulfill our own individ- 
ualities ; the second involves the duty to heed the 
good of our fellow man; the third involves the 
duty to realize that however well we may think 
we know what is good "for our fellow, we must 
not thrust even that good upon him unless we 
can win confirmation for our plan. The first is 
the force working toward individual progress ; the 
second is the force for helping others along with 
ourselves ; the third is the force that tests the no- 
tions of individuals and weeds out those which 
do not prove able to serve human need. No evil 
of to-day would long continue if it were sub- 
jected to the tests of these three ideals. What 
we need is not a new system, but a renewed ap- 
17 243 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

plication of the old ideals, a new realization of the 
old ideals looming so big as to dwarf the petty 
traditions, the petty self-interests, and the petty 
egotisms of daily temptation. 

To some this morality may seem not religious 
at all. He who demurs at our definition of relig- 
ion, hazarded above, may wish to see the idea of a 
personal God recognized as a part of the relig- 
ion of America. He should remember that our 
definition is a practical one. Our only real knowl- 
edge of God is in earthly relations, in the af- 
fairs of this life. Our only means of doing His 
will is in the performance of earthly duty. Our 
only sure guides as to His will are the still, small 
voice, which is the voice of the individual, and the 
voice of our fellows. We are accepting these as 
guides even when we follow biblical or ecclesi- 
astical authority; for either we believe such au- 
thority because the still, small voice impels us, or 
because the voice of our fellows convinces us. 
So even the voice of God for us is in our ideal 
of liberty — which is the still, small voice, — or 
in the ideals of fraternity and democracy — which 
are the voices of our fellows; and however per- 
sonal we believe Him to be, the manifestation of 
that personality may be for us in the very domi- 
nant notions of morality which we hold in com- 

244 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

mon with the man whose form of faith is differ- 
ent from ours. 

Religion, however, is something more than 
mere conformity of outward conduct to the ideals 
of what is worth while. As it is the supreme 
worth-while, and life is made up quite as much 
of emotions as of acts, religion is an attitude of 
mind. It constitutes one's attitude not merely 
toward one's own individuality, as it is manifested 
in the attainment of personal virtue, and toward 
one's fellow, as it is manifested in brotherhood, 
but toward life in general apart from conduct — 
that is, toward what we believe to be the ultimate 
Reality. This may be best illustrated by our at- 
titude toward the problem of evil. Are we rest- 
less and bitter in the experience of suffering, or 
are we reconciled? Do we demand peace and 
happiness, or are we glad of the suffering for the 
sake of the strength that grows out of it? 

Let us see what is the sane attitude toward the 
problem of evil. The basis is a realization that 
no such thing as contentment is possible for a 
human soul. The nearest approach to content- 
ment lies in the fullest realization of discontent. 
Nothing ever satisfies in itself. Take the most 
beautiful thing in human experience — perfect 
love. The lover is happy in his loved one's 

245 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

beauty, sweetness, strength, purity ; but even in his 
dreams he must see these things in action. They 
mean to him the possibility of physical vigor and 
grace; of kind words and deeds; of endurance 
and resistance and initiation ; of rising above the 
animal. It is really not what she is, here and now, 
that he revels in; it is what she will be in other 
times and places. He loves her as virgin largely 
in the thought of what she will be as wife; he 
loves her as wife largely in the thought of what 
she will be as mother; he loves her as mother 
largely in the thought of what she will be as com- 
panion of her children and as grandmother. We 
find delight in our children in infancy largely 
in the contemplation of their promise as boys and 
girls; in their childhood we see them as youths 
and maidens; in adolescence we see them as 
fathers and mothers; as fathers and mothers we 
see them as factors in the community. Our relish 
is never in the thing that is. We find our delight 
in the probability that the thing we know shall 
grow out of itself into the thing beyond. This 
principle is equally true of physical things. Our 
delight in work lies in seeing the thing coming. 
When the end has been accomplished and the full 
purpose has been served, our interest is gone. In 
our play, we are striving after something to be 

246 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

attained. Even the sense of victory gives delight 
only because it is a testimony of strength, or ex- 
pertness, or tenacity, which may be put to attain- 
ing something else. Contentment is not the aim 
of life ; it has fitting place only on the death bed. 
Life is always seeking, struggling, enduring for a 
future end ; and only so is there something to live 
for. 

What, then, have we to say of the problem of 
evil? If there were no evil in the world, there 
would be no such thing as necessity. The fond 
dream would also be the reality. But then there 
would be nothing to seek, nothing to struggle 
for, nothing to endure. Lotus eating would take 
the place of life. In such a world even love could 
find no place. The essence of love is service, and 
the delight of love is in self-sacrifice; but in a 
world where there is no necessity, no service can 
be performed and no sacrifice can be made. Love 
desires to master necessity; only so can it mani- 
fest itself. Sometimes, however, necessity re- 
fuses to be mastered : it will not yield to cour- 
age, or patience, or strength, or strife: it is 
inexorable. Then we have tragedy. Here is the 
real evil, the evil to which many refuse to be 
reconciled. This is the evil at sight of which 
" the fool hath said in his heart, ' There is no 

247 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

God.' " Yet this evil is quite as essential as the 
other. What satisfaction could any man find in 
struggling with necessity if he were always sure 
of mastering it? The delight of battle, the life- 
giving power of contest, lies in the possibility of 
defeat. Take away that, and one might as well 
take away necessity altogether and give a w r orld 
of mere dreams. The only possible world for 
life that shall be worth while is a world in which 
necessity gives us many a pain, many a sor- 
row, many a struggle, many a defeat, many a 
tragedy. 

This is comfortable doctrine when we are 
reasonably successful in our contests with neces- 
sity; but what is our attitude toward life and the 
Master of Life when necessity is inexorable and 
we are defeated ? Have we only to carry out the 
spirit of the game and " take our medicine " with 
a nonchalant " You win " ? To do this is better 
than to cringe, and whine, and abandon life. 
Cynicism is better than cowardice. There is 
something else, however. There is a vision that 
transcends the " here " and " now/' It is a big 
thing to be an individual, to have an individual 
life with one's own hopes and aspirations and 
temptations and strength and weakness. It is a 
bigger thing to know oneself a part of the big 

248 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

human current, one with other men in the brother- 
hood of common thought and passion, influenced 
by that current and contributing influence to it. 
It is the supreme thing to feel oneself a part 
of a current which knows no time or place, which 
is eternal, which finds in the sum of all thought 
and all passion the rounding out of the perfect 
ideal, the complete realization of the Divine. 
God's purpose is in the ages and in the universe, 
not in time and in place; so far as He is mani- 
fest to us, He works through human agency, and 
every individual is working out His will — either 
directly, in the good, or indirectly, in the evil 
opposition against which the good may work out 
and develop its own goodness. The history of 
mankind presents a working out of God's ideal 
through the progress of the ages. In God's ideal, 
as we find it reflected in our own ideal, are not 
only the courage and strength of battle, but the 
courage and patient endurance of defeat, of long 
suffering, of tragedy. God's ideal can be mani- 
fest on earth only as these things are embodied in 
human experience. The man who attains these 
is creating himself in God's image, is a coworker 
with God in the working out of God's ideal. He 
is then no pessimist, and no cynic. His attitude 
is Godward. His religion has set him free from 

249 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

the necessities of time and place. Necessity for 
him is no longer inexorable. He has mastered 
it. He has made dominant in his life a conscious- 
ness that he is part of eternal truth, and, whatever 
life may bring forth, life is for him worth while. 
He has found the preeminent worth-while not 
only in doing God's will but in being reconciled 
to that necessity which is a part of God's plan of 
the universe. This is the perfect peace. 



Let us summarize the method of the religious 
life. It is, first, to know the best self, to find 
those ideals which satisfy the best self; second, 
to see how those ideals are related to one's fellow 
and his ideals ; third, to see how those ideals are 
related to the eternal truths which transcend the 
truth of " here " and "now"; fourth, to grasp 
the exalted moments, to see how the notions that 
exalt them are related to self, to fellow, to God ; 
fifth, to weigh and balance and even prune the 
exalted notions until we are sure that in them 
neither individual right encroaches on community 
right nor community right on eternal right ; sixth, 
to strive to make these surviving exalted notions 
so dominant that in time of choice the truth be 
not overshadowed by obsessions, and the best 

250 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

that the soul has dreamed be embodied in the 
life. 

Have we hope of all this in America ? We be- 
gan with the fact that Americans are idealists. 
We saw next that a man must choose the best 
when he recognizes it, when it becomes a domi- 
nant ideal for him. We found ideal marriage 
to be the chief source of progress ; and ideal mar- 
riage is commoner in America than elsewhere in 
the world to-day. We found the possibilities of 
education in creating dominant ideals to be vast ; 
and everyone knows that the American interest 
in education is intense. We found the American 
notion of liberty conducive to the highest devel- 
opment of individual attainment; and individu- 
ality is likely to be emphasized by conditions 
springing from race mixture. We found the 
American notion of brotherhood conducive to the 
keenest recognition of the claims of fellow men. 
We found the American notion of democracy a 
safeguard against the harmful practice of theories 
which cannot convince. We have, then, every 
hope for progress up to the last point discussed — 
namely, that phase of religion which means not 
only a desire to do God's will but reconciliation 
to His ways. We have no ground to fear the 
American character here. We are idealists. We 
17* 251 



THE AMERICAN HOPE 

are loyal. We do not count costs when big things 
are at stake. We like to conceive of things in 
the large, to feel the thrill of world movements 
and of eternal truths. The individual with us 
does commonly surrender individuality in enthu- 
siasm for something too big to bear anyone's 
name. We are optimistic and can bear defeat. 
We are proud of endurance and we scorn to show 
the white feather. These are just the qualities 
that reconcile a man to the existence of evil — 
that enable him at all times to say, with Job, 
" I know that my Redeemer liveth." The Amer- 
ican hope is well defined. 

It would be sad to think that the doctrine of 
this book is a balm for discontented souls. It is 
meant not for a sedative, but for a stimulus. We 
in America have before us, just here and now, 
something better than a hope : we have an op- 
portunity — the grandest opportunity any race ever 
had — to develop men, to make life obviously 
worth while, to help on the will of the Divine. 
The conditions are right. We have the physical 
resources for abundant physical life; we have a 
complex social and economic structure beauti- 
fully adapted to bring out all the best qualities 
both of individuality and of brotherhood; our 
character fits us to see the big truths of eternity 

252 



THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE 

and to adjust ourselves to God's plan; we have 
lurking ideals and exalted moments out of which 
we may in ourselves and in others develop notions 
that shall dominate for righteousness. Our task 
is to be awake, to see our opportunity, to snatch 
it, and to make the most of it. 



INDEX 



Acquired characteristics, 
transmission of, 52-57, 
58-62 

America: idealism in, 5-14; 
sense of responsibility 
in, see Responsibility; 
love of excellence in, 
112, 122; religion, as 
fulfillment of ideals of, 
242-244, 251-253 

Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 

37 

Art: essence of, 112, 113; 
method of, 114; indif- 
ference to, 117; need of 
standards in, 122 

Automobiles : recklessness 
with, 103; protection 
against drivers of, 169 

Baseball, 118 

Bible, as guide to conduct, 

Brotherhood: as an Ameri- 
can ideal, 11; basis of, 
45; tactlessness as a 
violation of , 1 2 7 ; double 
aspect of, 128; fullness 
of, 128; dominant no- 
tions of, 138 

Browning, quoted, v 



Capital: nature of, 186; 
origin of, in America, 
199; effect of private 
control of, 199-207; 
apparent excessive 
growth of, 204-207; 
laborers' power to ac- 
cumulate, 209 
Capitalist, limitations on 

power of, 207-210 
Chance, in will, 39 
Charity, basis of, 212 
Church, function of, 236- 

240 
Class pretensions, 134-138 
Collective bargaining, 229 
Collectivistic ideal de- 
scribed, 9 
Conscience : governed by 
dominant notions, 24- 
29; flexibility of, 140; 
see Dominant notions 
Corporation law as an evil, 

177 
Craftsmanship, dignity in, 

95 
Culture: function of, 96-98; 
value of, 108; failures 
of, 108, 155; minimum 
scope of, no; aim of, 



255 



INDEX 



Death penalty, need of, 174 

Degeneracy, causes of, 213 

Democracy : as an American 
ideal, 1 1 ; nature of, 
160; value of, 163-165 

Directors, responsibility of, 
177 

Discontent, greatest con- 
tentment, 245 

Distrust : economic waste of, 
230 ; not an effect of the 
present industrial sys- 
tem, 231 

Divorce, 79-87 

Dominant notions: defined, 
24; governing will, 24; 
permanence of, 26; 
creation of, 33, 168; 
value of imagination in 
creating, 103 ; of broth- 
erhood, 138; of moral- 
ity, 147-149 ; as religion, 
235; in American re- 
ligion, 242-244, 251- 
253 

Education: effect of recent, 
on sense of responsi- 
bility, 1 5 ; function of, 
96-98; aim of, 99; to 
cultivate power, 99, 
106 ; practical things in, 
vagueness about, 10 1; 
value of imagination in, 
1 o 1 - 1 o 6 ; through work , 
107; failures of liberal, 
108, 155; value of lib- 
eral, 108; minimum 



scope of liberal, no; 
social, 124-130, 138; 
moral, 142-149; aim of 
liberal, 150-153; dan- 
gers of vocational, at 
state expense, 152-155, 

156 

Emerson, cited, 90 
Employers: responsibility 

of, 177; limitation on 

power of, 225 
Environment, as a factor in 

progress, 57, 58-62 
Equality, not a fact, 43 
Evil, the problem of, 245- 

250 
Excellence, American love 

of, 112, 122 
Exclusiveness, 134-138 

Facts, sole value of, 100, 

109 
Family, right to beget, 210- 

213 
Femininity, described, 88 
Food, impure, protection 

against, 174 
Fraternities in high schools, 

172 
Fraternity, see Brotherhood 
Free love, 8^ 

Good nature, excess of, 17, 
165 

High- school fraternities, 172 
History as chief liberal 
study, 97 



256 



INDEX 



Idealism : as chief American 
trait, 5-14; test of, 6 

Imagination, value of, 101- 
106 

Immigration, effect of: on 
standards, 161; on 
land, 1 88-1 9 1 

Individualistic ideal de- 
scribed, 9 

Individuality : sacredness of, 
10, 160; in religion, 239 

Innocence, protection of, 
144-147 

Intellectual pleasures, 119 

Interest, nature of, 186 

Irresponsibility : doctrine of, 
29-32; responsibility 
growing from, 32-36 

Jealousy excluded by love, 
69 

Labor: dignity in, 95, 120; 
moving things the only 
physical, 183; nature 
of, 183; needs of, 184, 
187-188; nature of sur- 
plus of, 228 

Laborers' power to accumu- 
late capital, 209 

Land: effect of private con- 
trol of, 188-197; origin 
of private control of, in 
America, 192 ; national- 
ization of, indefensible, 
197 

Law, power of, 167-177 



Lawlessness in young, pro- 
tection against, 172 

Liberal education, see Cul- 
ture 

Liberty, as American ideal 

1 1 ; see Individuality 
Love: defined, 65-69; free, 

83 
Lowell, quoted, 114 
Lust in marriage, 70, 92 

Management, wages of, 203 
Masculinity, described, 88 
Marriage: holiness of, 72- 
79; as a legal institu- 
tion, 79; after divorce, 
82, 83, 86; independent 
of parenthood, 87-90; 
willfully childless, 90; 
lust in, 70, 92 
Meredith, George, cited, 20 
Morality : nature of, 27; 
guide for, 141; educa- 
tion in, 142-149; domi- 
nant notions of, 147- 
149 
Moving things the only 
physical labor, 183 

Nationalization of the 
means of production, 
indefensible, 197, 217- 
222 
Nature, joy in, 121 
Necessity, as good, 247 



257 



INDEX 



Obsessions: imagination as 
protection against, 103; 
operation of, 103; pro- 
tection of the com- 
munity against, 168 

Overproduction impossible, 
227 



Parenthood: primary func- 
tion of marriage, 66- 
69 ; as an accident or in- 
cident, 7 1 ; meaning of 
Nature's, 72-79 

Parthenogenesis, 66 

Penal code, function of, 

Population: excess of, 91; 

effect of growth of, on 

land, 188-190 
Power: making for right- 
eousness, 3 7 ; chief aim 

of education, 106 
Prenatal influence, 50-52, 

58-62 
Primitive passions, place of, 

in modern life, 1,72 
Private control of land and 

capital, effect of, 188- 

226 
Prostitution in marriage, 

70, 92 
Public opinion, power of, 

164-167 
Punishment, fear of: as a 

moral force, 31; as a 

regulative force, 167- 

177 

258 



Race suicide, nature of, 90, 
214 

Realism in American novels, 
6 

Reflex action, 168 

Religion: definition of, 235; 
individuality in , 239; 
dominant notions in 
American, 242-244, 
251-253; more than 
mere conduct, 245 

Religious life, method of, 
240—251 

Rent, origin of, 193 

Rescuing from sin, 41 

Responsibility: sense of, in 
American ideals, 1 1 ; 
individualistic aspects 
of, 12-14; causes of de- 
cline of, 15-17, 177; 
growing from doctrine 
of irresponsibility, 32- 
36 ; in divorce, 80 ; fuller 
meaning of, to be rec- 
ognized, 175-177, 181 

Right to live, 219 

Right to work, 183, 188, 216 

Righteousness: power mak- 
ing for, 3 7 ; brother- 
hood of, 252 

Rush, as a sign of idealism, 



Schools weakening a sense 
of responsibility, 15 

School teacher, function of, 
98 



INDEX 



Sex: function of, 65 ; educa- 
tion concerning, 146 

Sexual relation, perversion 
of, 69 

Sin: in the Divine plan, 38; 
function of, 38; rescu- 
ing from, 41 

Single tax: basis of, 194; 
objections to its crude 
form, 223-225; out of 
place in church activ- 
ity, 237 

Snobbishness, 131-138 

Social education, 124-130, 

138 

Socialism: impracticable, 
2 1 7-2 2 2 ; out of place in 
church activity, 237 
Stevenson, quoted, v 
Study compared with work 
as an educative force, 
107 

Tact as an aim in educa- 
tion, 124 

Tactlessness violates broth- 
erhood, 127 

Teacher, function of, 98 

Trade unions, methods of, 
227-230 



Tragedy, as good, 247-250 
Truth: sure to prevail, 46; 
as protection to inno- 
cence, 144-147 

Unearned increment: origin 
of; 194; community's 
right to, 222—225 

Vocational training : place 
of, 151 ; dangers of, at 
state expense, 152-155, 

156 

Wages: basis of, 202; of 
management, 203 

Will : unmoral, development 
of, 20; moral, develop- 
ment of, 22-29; gov- 
erned by dominant no- 
tions, 24; moral, nature 
of, 27; momentary im- 
potence of, 29, 43-46; 
chance in, 39; meaning 
of freedom of, 39 

Womanliness, described, 88 

Work : compared with study 
as an educative force, 
107; joy in, 120 



THE END 



(1) 



MAY 25 1910 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 

MAY 25 1**0 



ii mi 



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.HSSASY 0F CONGRESS ( 

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